OUR NEWS Finally RAIN!! Sept 16 & 17, it finally RAINED! Thursday it "spit" a lot and lightly sprinkled. Friday it rained off and on all day, at times hard. The ground is wet a good 2" down. Thank God! A walk around shows how grateful the grass is. The Bermuda has is looking alert again! On another note Janis finally caught the newest calf (born Sept 3, 2011) and it's a girl! Her name is Daisy. Heat Wave and Drought Continue If our pond wasn't 15-20 feet deep it would have dried up like everyone else's. The grass that grew back after the fire is shriveled up from the lack of rain. The grass is gone next door but another good neighbor has offered to open his 160 acres where they has been no stock and plenty of native grass there. As soon as the calves are weaned, the cows will go across the road into his pasture. September had started off with a very welcome cool spell; temperatures dropped 20 degrees. The heat is back today (104) but another "cold" front is due in tonight/tomorrow and with a 40% chance of rain. We need it so badly. Thank God for the deep well. Thank God for helping Janis get the bull in the pen by herself (without all the cows) last night then into the trailer for the ride home to Guthrie this morning. Heat Wave! Drought! Fire! If 50 days and counting of 100+ degree weather for OKC wasn't bad enough, the drought made it worse. Then the middle of July when everyone was baling what hay was available, our neighbor's hay baler started a fire. About 15 big piles of dead cedars in the field we had just cleared this spring caught fire creating tremendous heat and a smoke cloud visible for miles. All area fire departments responded as a strong south wide pushed the fire north, easy & west. They concentrated on saving our barn and equipment. Our animals happened to be in the SW corner, the ONLY place they were safe. Consequently all our pasture except about 12 acres and all our woods were burnt up. Our nice neighbor to the east opened his north pasture so our cows could have some grass and another neighbor brought a roll of hay. So far we are OK; we have gotten enough rain in August to help the grass start to regrow except in the worst burned area. With the drought though, we've been advised it will take at least 2 years to recover. On a good note, the rest of the standing cedars were burned and just need to be removed. Underbrush and thatch are gone and the bermuda is coming in strongest. No Tornados! As everyone knows Spring 2011 was terrible for tornadoes. I'm happy to say they missed us this time. We finally got some good rains this spring and the grass is growing like gangbusters but the pond is still half-empty.  Thank God for the good well. Handling our First Calves Handling our first calves which were all bull-calves, was quite comical. We have no photos as we were both quite occupied so you'll have to use your imagination. One finally came in the corral with the adults and while I had the correct banding tool I didn't have the correct rope. I chased the calf around with a floppy rope while he gave me a couple good kicks in the thigh. I finally got it over his head then Wayne held him around his shoulders in a standing position while I banded him. Lesson #1, use a lariat. We headed to the store and bought a lariat plus some ear tags. The calves were wiley about coming in the pen when their mothers ate snacks so when one came in we had to take advantage of it. The next calf that came in the pen, it was almost dark. Wayne said, "You want to try this one?" "Sure, I said, I'll get my stuff". He went out and lassoed the calf very easily (on foot, not on horseback like they do in rodeos). There was no jerking the calf off it's feet. Unfortunately he forgot to put on gloves first. In my hurry I mounted the ear tag backwards in the tag tool so it promptly fell out afterward but I did get the band on properly. Lesson #2, have good gloves on before you rope the calf. Lesson #3, have all your stuff properly assembled in a bucket before you rope the calf. How to Build a Freezeless Stock Tank for Offgrid Location How Janis designed and built this tank and how it fared the winter of 2010-2011. Surviving a Blizzard in a Horse Trailer Offgrid How Janis survived the January 2011 blizzard on the farm in a horse trailer without electricity!