by Mary Anne
Barton County WIFE

December 1, 2001

This morning starts off earlier than I had intended.  Our blind house cat doesn’t seem to know it’s a weekend and comes to wake me up as soon as Dean lets her in the house.  Of course, he’s gone early since it’s deer season so my whole idea of sleeping in isn’t going to work. 

I wouldn’t mind except that the coyotes were noisy around 4 a.m.    I was up switching on some outside lights to quiet the coyotes and scare them off.  I don’t know if it works but sometimes, when they’re close, it must.  We just let the calves out of the corral yesterday and I wasn’t sure how they would react to the coyotes.  I didn’t hear anything so the calves must not have been bothered.

We weaned the 2001 spring calves several weeks ago and kept them in the corral until they were eating grain and calmed down.  We were able to pet one calf on its nose the very first night we brought them into the corral so they weren’t very wild even in the beginning.  After several days, we let them out into one wheat field.  We have other fields we could let them graze but the wheat hasn’t rooted down because it’s been so dry and the calves are just pulling the wheat plants out of the ground when they graze.  We’ve fenced off a small area of the pasture so now the calves can drink out of the pond.  We’re going to sell the calves at the Russell sale barn next week so Julie & Wayne will have to pick out their 4-H calves before Thursday.  It’s hard to choose when the calves are this size but they’ve been watching them since they were born last February and March. 

Dean’s back to feed buckets of grain to the calves and load up wheat straw bales for the Masonic Lodge to use in the nativity.  We bale small square bales of wheat straw to use inside the barn during calving and have loaned bales for nativity scenes for several years. 

While Wayne and I are getting ready to go to Salina to do some Christmas and clothes shopping, Dean is in town helping put up the nativity scene.  We don’t cross paths so Wayne & I head on up to Salina while Dean is out checking cattle in pastures and deer hunting. 

This time of year, cattle are the main focus.  We have all the cows “running on stalks” – in electric fence pastures on milo and cornfields.  It’s good eating for the cows but Dean is having to haul water to them.  With 90 cows each drinking 40-60 gallons of water a day, that’s a lot of water to haul.  He has a big plastic tank that they’ve secured on the back of the wheat truck, having taken all the sideboards off – leaving just a flat truck bed.  The city of Hoisington has a water drop where he can purchase 250 gallons for 50 cents.  It takes lots of quarters to fill the tank.  Then he drives to the field and opens a valve and the tank drains into the water tanks that the cattle drink out of.  He has to haul water every other day so it does take quite a bit of time.  He also has to check the electric fences to make sure they’re still working.  The deer are moving around and they tend to run right thru the fence wire and break it or pull it down. 

So, taking care of cattle, deer hunting, and Christmas shopping were the big items for today.