Meanwhile,back at the ranch...

Spring is a busy time.

Our biggest news is that Kathy had her hip replaced on April 22.  She has had a follow-up visit to the doctor, who said she's doing perfect, and is in her second week of physical therapy.  I'm trying to be a nurse, cook and housekeeper but none of those is my strong suit.  Amy spent the first 2 weeks here and was really a big help.  See if you can tell which hip is which.

Them bones

The cows are separated into breeding pastures, 6 registered Polled Herefords with Lambert, the Kansas bull who got pneumonia on his trip to Texas.  He's feeling better and we're hoping he performs well.  The others are back in the big pasture with the Angus bull.  I leased Self's pasture last year hoping to burn ours, but nature didn't cooperate.  We were anxious to have them home, and our grass was better than on Self's.  We'll see about next year.

Here I'm raking the oats I cut Saturday.  The windrows in front and to the left are as they came out of the cutter.  Those to the right have been raked--2 windrows raked into one.  The small lines in between are the rows from the planter.  Once in a while you can see where I got distracted or lost while planting, and overlapped or underlapped instead of going parallel.  It aggravates Larry but I think it's funny.  I hope to bale tomorrow.

Abstract in oats

Mickey Streater and I are clearing mesquites and cedars from part of Nettie's pasture (if someone wants to suggest a name for that place I'll entertain it--"Nettie's pasture" seems kind of dull).  He has a skid steer with a mesquite grubber and cedar shear.  I think it's more fun to him to shear than grub, so I spend a lot of time on foot cutting mesquites with the chainsaw and spraying the stumps with poison while he shears cedars.

Winnah winnah...

Mickey vs. Cedar

We're down to 2 old hens, although both had been laying eggs until this week when one seemed to start feeling bad.  I'm putting her in a separate pen from the other and giving her plenty of food and water but, feeling like the handwriting is on the wall, I ordered 10 new Rhode Island Red chicks who are living in the Chick Hotel in the garage.

Hot chicks

They eat that whole jar of food and drink half that bottle of water each day.  As you might guess, they're growing fast.

Life is good.  Come see us and pick on Kathy while she's helpless.