Shearing day

Marv shearing!

We had 2 1/2 days of sheep shearing over the weekend. 215 sheep were sheared, ewes, ewe lambs and rams. 2 shearers were working. Marv who is 72 years old and he said he started shearing Feb 20, 1958. That is quite a few years of work. He said he normally sheared 20,000 sheep a year but had a record year once of 50,000. Over 51 years that is a lot of sheep. He still is going strong and handles the sheep like he is 20 years old. The other shearer, Robin, is 38 years old and weighed about 100 pounds. She did really well handling the 300# sheep tho. Here's a couple pictures of the eventful weekend.

This is Marv and Henry stuffing the wool sack with wool. Robin shearing.

The before and after pictures.

Feb 18, 2009

Here's a pic of the flowers I got from Bob on Valentine's Day. They are called the Blue rose, but are a light lavender in color. My favorite color and I collect teddy bears, so it was a great gift.

It's been a while since my last post, only because my computer has been in the shop. I wasn't able to get onto Internet Explorer or go anywhere on the web. Dee Dee who works on computers here, has finally fixed the computer...Thanks, Dee Dee....

We have had some good weather the past few days. On Sun we trimmed bulls that will be sold on Mar. 11th. A few pics with my new telephoto lens. I don't know if I like the lens, it shows the inside of the sleeve of the lens and doesn't get a good photo. They trimmed the bulls and then used the torch to burn off the hair left over. The bulls looked good after they were done. 34 bulls were trimmed and it took about 5 hours to complete.

This is a shot of the bulls after they were trimmed.

A calf was brought down the other day because the mother died. We are now bottle feeding him 2 times a day.

We have cleaned out the shop, moving stuff to the pole shed and stuff from the pole shed to the shop to get ready for the sheep to be moved into the shop. The shearer that will be coming this weekend will need the sheep to be penned up for the night before. We have about 200 sheep to shear. The shearer will have someone helping him and will be able to shear about 140 per day.

We had to move horse carts around, pull tools from the shop to the pole shed, move pallets of feed around and make way for anything else coming in.

We put up an electric fence for the bulls since some bulls got into a pen they were'nt supposed to. We tried to tag 3 new calves but the tagger is broke and have to wait to tag them till we get a new one.

Here's a pic of one of the new calves. He is about a day old and 80 pounds.

2/7/09

We have had some beautiful weather for the past few days. It's been getting up to about 65 degrees. That is shirtsleeve weather and put the coats away! This will all change tomorrow (Sunday). A nice cold front is coming in with rain and snow.

Bob has been helping a friend who was contracted by the railroad to clean up coal from an 11 car derailment. Some interesting information is that each of these cars carry approximately 200,000 pounds of coal. That would be about 1 million pounds per 5 cars. In this case, 11 cars would be about 2 million 200,000 pounds of coal.

Most of the trains that come thru here are pulling about 100 - 150 cars hauling coal and they come thru about every 20 minutes, 24/7. Now that's a lot of coal!!!!

This coal is coming from the Gillette, WYO area and headed east.

If we can find the price of a pound of coal, it will be an interesting figure to report in a future log.

If you look above the Railroad Crossing sign there is a string of Canada geese that flew by to see what was up...Goose hunting season ended yesterday so they are safe for another season.

The other photo shows an excavator, yellow, used for loading coal into dump trucks for hauling it away.

Bob and I went to Lisco, NE last night, a small town 15 miles from Oshkosh. We went for my birthday dinner of prime rib. My birthday isn't until Monday but they only serve prime rib on Fri. so I was able to get an early present. It was wonderful and the place got really busy with the end of the goose hunters.

Feb 4, 2009

Not too much to post these days. We've been having some warmer weather, it was 64 degrees today.
We moved heifers that are calving, to a corral near the house. They will be easier to watch if problems arise. We have had a couple heifers have some hard times with the first calf.
I am now feeding 4 lambs. The mothers don't have enough milk and I have to supplement them. They are so cute and know when it is time to eat.
I am now going to work every morning for a while till lambing season ends. We have to get the barn ready and shop ready for 110 ewes to lamb. On Feb. 20th we will have the shearer out to get all the ewes sheared.
Bob is going to be going to work tomorrow at 5:15am. He was asked to be a flagger up by Bridgeport. There was a train derailment and the cleanup needs flaggers. So, gotta pack a lunch and lots of water for Bob tomorrow.
Have a good week!

COLD WINTER DAYS

Here's Henry...I had to make sure the camera was working good..And he didn't even break it!!!

Oshkosh, NE on a Sunday afternoon.

We are having horrible weather here. Today is is around 7 degrees above zero. Tonight when I got off work, it was ZERO...Too cold for me...We have about 8" of snow on the ground also. It was a bad day for calving. We had 2 calves born and got them ear tagged. Henry noticed a calf on the other side of the fence that had been born yesterday. He evidently couldn't get back across and he was so cold. We loaded him up in the truck and turned the heater on high, he was so cold. We then scouted for more calves and found one at the other end of the corn field. He was new born and not doing well. Well, he took a place on my lap and we headed back to the house. Henry brought them inside and we got them under a heat lamp. Elton tubed them, putting warm liquid into them. He was going to get them to the barn after they start reviving.

Picture of some ewes weathering out the snow..

I have a couple lambs I'm feeding till the ewe starts producing milk. One is so small, she doesn't even look like a lamb. But she is thriving and drinking milk replacer. She doesn't eat much but tries hard. Her sibling is doing great, drinking milk replacer with gusto. Here are the 2 lambs I'm feeding with me in my work uniform..

We have been breaking ice in water tanks, feeding the animals well to get them thru the cold spell.

I have been making quite a few greeting cards since I got my Cricut card machine. Bob told me to order another cartridge for it for my birthday. I have one coming in the mail.

I now have to do my taxes. I received my W-2's today and will file as soon as I get new printer cartridge for my printer. Don't know if I'll get any back or not.

Hope everyone is staying warm! The sunset at the end of the day.

Busy days

This was in the yard of someone by the lake. For a minute I thought I was back in Arizona!

I've had a few busy days this past week.

At work, we are starting to have new calves. 3 have been born so far and they now have ear tags. Henry has been doing a good job getting that taken care of. The sheep are still waiting to lamb. The real heavy lambing will take place the 1st 3 weeks of March.

We moved 73 cows to a north pasture yesterday. We drove them from one pasture up the road to some corrals and then trailered them to the pasture. It did take all day. We could only put 11 cows in one trailer and 7 in the other so we had several trips. The weather has been good, up in the 60's to move the cows. The weekend was warm but the winds were horrible. We had gusts to 35 mph.

I went to a bull sale on Monday. They were selling Herefords at the Van Newkirk ranch. It was televised and drew a good crowd. The top 2 year old bull sold for $9000 and there were a few that sold for $6000 - $7000. The top heifer sold for $3500. It was fun to go to. Before the sale they provided a BBQ'd brisket luncheon.

I received an email from my sister, Donna, in Laramie, WY today. She and her family have made reservations to go to San Diego over spring break in March. They will be going to the zoo, seeing the sites, walking the beach and just relaxing for a week. Wish I could fit in her suitcase!

Bob and I went to the Oshkosh auditorium today to visit the Farm and Ranch show. There were a few vendors there, nothing like the big tent in Quartzsite tho. They served lunch of BBQ beef sandwiches. Afterwards we grabbed the camera and headed toward Lake McConnahay. There is an eagle viewing area on the south side of the lake. We saw probably 60 - 70 bald eagles in the trees. It was amazing. We also saw a heron, some pelicans and ducks. There is a nice little campground just east of there also. When we get ready for our auction in April, we were thinking of taking the 5er down there for a week or so and just spend time by the lake before heading to Wyo for the summer.

I noticed in the paper that the 4-H Citizen Washington Focus delegates are taking orders for pizza to be delivered in time for the super bowl. I called one of the boys I know and have one ordered. One less thing I have to make for the super bowl and it does help the kids out!

There is a church in Keystone, NE just south of the lake we visited today. It is divided in the middle, half being protestant and half being catholic. They do hold regular services also.

Jan. 17, 2009

This is some history of John Hollman. This is about a mile south of Oshkosh.

Today we were supposed to do a cattle drive, but the wind decided to come up in gusts to 25mph and plans were changed. We had to drive them when the temps are cool with a slight breeze so they don't get overheated.

We got the sheep sorted so the ewes that will lamb next are at the barn.

Today we all did chores and had the rest of the day off. Bob and I went to Chappel to a garage sale, then headed over to Ogalalla to the Antique Mall. It was nice to get away and do something different.

Carley and Bob...

We took pics yesterday of some geese flying into some corn fields south of Oshkosh.