My Last Post!

Hey Everyone! I just wanted to thank everyone that has taken the time to sit and read my blogs about my farms. This semester was defiantly a quick one, and this class was my favorite one out of all of them! It was great to interact with everyone in a different way! And, just by reading your blogs if you had one, it feels like I got to know you that much better! The blogs and discussions were my favorite, because I felt like everyone had their own way of seeing a different point. It has been a long trip of college for me, and I only have my four finals left, and I will be done! I hope everyone had a great semester, and I hope you all do well on your finals!

Naughty Karma

Karma has been in such a naughty mood lately. I feel like she is starting to enjoy getting in trouble. She was taught at a very young age to not beg, and she has been doing it a lot lately. So, my boyfriend, Derek, put her to the test to see what she would do. He was eating a piece of pizza, and he did not want the crust. So, he set it back on his plate on our end table. Karma stared and she knew she was not supposed to have it. We told her no, and she laid around and forgot about it for awhile. Then, when Derek was talking to someone, she went up and took it! Derek was not happy at all about that, especially since he spent so long trainer her not to do that. AND, she has been in the garbage so much! I just mopped the floors yesterday, then I had to go outside and help Derek put a loft in our shed, and when I came back it she had dug through the garbage and took out a bunch of coffee grounds! It was terrible and not worth mopping again. After my finals are done and I am in the middle of job searching, she will be getting extra attention from me and hopefully retrain her to not do that stuff.

Karma and BooBoo

Karma and BooBoo (my boyfriends little brother) had a fun filled day last Saturday. My boyfriend and I were in the sheep barn all day getting set up for lambing season. We had to redo a couple fences, because the way we had it set up last year did not work the greatest. We put everything up, then we had to give shots and sort the sheep into two different pens. We also had to do it, because we needed to make sure that we had all the sheep, and that none of them ran off. BooBoo will run the sheep into a smaller pen, Derek (my boyfriend) will shut individual ones into a even smaller pen to get their ear number to give them their shots. I write down all the information that is needed to be put into our sheep document. Here is a picture of what Karma and BooBoo were doing until we gave shots to the sheep.

Hunting Accident

The title may sound a little extreme compared to how my story is going to go, but the other weekend was the last weekend of deer hunting. My good friend sent me a hilarious picture via SnapChat, of his neighbor and his truck. I guess, his neighbor was walking back to his truck after a morning of hunting, and he saw a buck run out of the woods across from where his stand was. He said it was running at a pretty decent speed. So he took two shots at it. The first one he missed because he saw dirt fly up. The second shot, he missed again, and the deer kept running. When he got back to his truck, he noticed that on the second shot, he hit something and it was not a deer. He ended up shooting his truck instead. I about died from laughing so hard, so I had to take a screenshot of the picture to show everyone.

Market time!

So, if you read one of my first posts, we have a lot of cattle on our farm. Yesterday, we sent 40 of them off to market. Sounds easy, right? Stick 40 of them into a trailer and let the driver take off? No! I do not even know why I stick around when the boys are sorting cattle to get them ready for market. All it is is yelling and swearing. I just stand in one stall, and when the boys tell me to let 20 cattle go to a separate stall, I swing the gates open. There was one cow that DID NOT want to go into the barn to get put on the trailer. He ran back and fourth for so long, his snot strings were hanging all the way down to the ground. Then, the process of setting up gates from the other side of the farm, we have to move a group of cows from one end to the yard, to the other side where the barn is located. It defiantly is a huge process, but it was worth it in the end.

Got my buck!

I decided to take a break from school, and go home for the last day of deer hunting. Dad and I went out early in the morning, and around 7:00 I had a small buck come across the field. I told my dad that morning that I was going to shoot the first thing that came across my stand. I shot from about 45-50 yards away. He nose dived into the woods, so I sat in my stand and thought "Did I hit it?" After 20 minutes of being anxious and questioning myself, I walked over to the side of the woods where he went in, maybe thinking I would find a blood track. My dad and I found one blood drop and we could not find anymore. We walked about 10 yards into the woods, and my dad and I nearly tripped over my deer from not looking up. I was nice to finally shoot one again after two years! He defiantly is not one to brag about nor will I get a lot of meat from him, but I was more proud that I was able to shoot from such a far distance!

Kie

My little brother came home from college for a couple of hours, because he was able to get his Christmas present a little early! My cousin's cat just had another litter of kittens, and they were giving them away. My brother's roommate had a kitten, but he recently moved. So, he went to my cousins house and picked out a kitten to bring back to college with him. It is his first "big" responsibility he has ever had, so it was pretty exciting for me and him. I took him to a pet store afterwards, and I just paid for all of his kitty items, and that was his Christmas present from me. I told him to name her Delilah, but he said it was too long, and went with the name Kie. She is the cutest thing ever and she has one green eye and one blue one! I hope she likes the apartment life!

Game Time!

Shotgun Opener started last Saturday for deer hunters! I enjoy going out hunting, not so much to eat deer meat, but more for the entertainment of being with my dad for a couple of weekends. I do like deer meat, don't get me wrong, but when you have a whole freezer full with beef sticks and sausage for a whole year, it gets old. I saw a lot of does this past weekend, some pretty big ones too! And, you all know how hot it was also. People say that deer do not move when it's hot out, but I sure have seen a lot of deer and it was 75 degrees one afternoon where I was hunting! I had to take off two layers and my boots on Saturday, because it was too hot for me! That is that kind of hunting I enjoy, because I am a huge baby when it comes to the cold. I am anxious for this weekend !

Hanging up Summer 2016

As I have talked about in my earlier discussion, my family owns our own gravel pit, which is located a mile behind our house. I ride fourwheeler there a lot, but the best part about it is being able to bring my friends out there to fish. When we found out that there were fish in our pond and that they are able to survive in there, we went and bought more at a fish farm and started to stock it awhile back. Now, we have plenty of fish and they are super fun to catch. This past weekend, we had to hang it up for the year, so we took the dock and the boat out of the water. My dad is an auctioneer, so I just wanted to show you guys our super funny pontoon my dad bought at an auction, and my uncle and him put in new flooring and painted it. My friends always get a good laugh at this "redneck" boat, but it is the slickest thing to have in our ponds!

Harvest 2016

We are finally getting toward the end of our harvest! Just need to dig a few more fields and lay some manure on. I love this time of year when we start to settle down after a long year of planting and harvesting. I have been on drier bin duty for two weeks now, so I could do my homework while the boys were out in the field. We did not need any over flows or fires from the drier, so I stuck around the farm to keep on eye on it. Soon enough we will be in our hibernation stage, trying to keep warm and go outside the least amount of times as possible! I just love coming home, the house smelling like a pumpkin, and the crock pots having a large amount of food supplies for when everyone comes home for supper!

Bloodhounds

My best friend owns two bloodhounds. Their names are Behr and Mable. They had their second set of puppies about three months ago, and they are finally heading out to meet their new owners! I went to go visit her and I cannot get over their adorable wrinkles in their faces. I got a really funny video of the runt of the group. She fed her by herself, because their mom stopped feeding them, and she ate so much that she could barely walk her belly got so big!

April 2016

In this post, I just wanted to throw it back to when my lambs were babies. I miss when they were this little, because they were a lot of fun and very entertaining to watch. When ever they got hungry, they would run back and fourth in their pen. I shot this video and everyone on my Instagram thought it was hilarious because one of the lambs falls down. Here is a video of the little cuties running!

Blood Samples

Okay, so a couple weeks ago I wrote a blog about "A Shepherds Gift" and about how we are in a sheep organization that is trying to get the public to know about the cure for Huntington's Disease. We have the cure, just no money to get it into the hospitals. I will leave a link for the video again!

GM1 for HD

Anyways, we were getting the sheep prepared for their blood tests that we will send the blood to get lab work done on it. Right after we separated female and male lambs, we gathered the females into a smaller pen together. This was our first time taking blood samples by ourselves, so it was very tricky. The girls all got part of their necks shaved off, so we were able to see the veins. Then, we put a needle on the tube, and let it work it's magic. We did not use a syringe, it just came into the tube on its own, or it tried to go in there. Some of the lambs were very difficult to get blood from. We gathered the blood tubes, stuck them in the farm fridge, and let the lambs gather with their mothers again in the pasture.

First Batch of Lambs

Last week, my boyfriend and I went through all the lambs that were born last March/April and separated them by female and male! It was not the easiest task, sense they have not be led in and out of a pen before. The older ones know when to go and where to go when we are moving them around the farm yard. The female lambs were clipped with a new ear piece (this is so we know who is related to what ram we have in the farm yard) and they were sent off into the grasslands with their mothers. The boys, however, went to market. We do not keep any of the boys. We band them when they are little and when they hit about 6 months, that is when they are off the farm yard. The picture I took of them was right after we separated the females and males. The girls were a little shook up after seeing that their herd was cut in half.

Sheep friends!

Okay, after a few of my blogs that I have posted, I may seem like I am a little obsessed over my sheep and my dog, Karma. But, how can you not love this little personality she has going! I took this video of Karma pretending she is a sheep (again) and she just wanted to do what all the other sheep were doing! It was dinner time for her sheep friends, so she played along with it and ate dinner with them. That girl never ceases to amazes me. <3

Harvest Time!

As many of you know, it is harvest time for the farmers! I love this time of year; the smell, the beautiful colors, the amazing holidays' coming up, but there is one thing that I miss the most, my farmer! I love to be able to spend many hours out in the tractor as I can, but with juggle school and work, there are not many days that it can happen! I honor all the farmers that are out there to make sure that we are able to put food on the table at night for our families! I found this awesome picture that describes my everyday life, especially now! Even when it isn't harvest, we still have the sheep and cows to care for. I love my farmers!

Gravel Pit

When I was growing up, I was blessed with having many trails to ride my fourwheeler on. I was able to go around a lot of the fields that we own and my dad's gravel pit. When I rode, it was a way to get away from the drama and just to think about life. I got my first fourwheeler when I was in kindergarten, and my dad started to let me ride alone in 3rd grade. It was the best to just get home, fill up the tank with gas, listen to my cd player/ipod and just ride. It was relaxing and I would be able to do it for hours. I actually rode wheeler until I was a sophomore in college. I would drive back to my parents house every weekend and that was the first thing I would do. I then made myself stay at college and finally get the experience, so I do not ride as much as I used to. I have lived with my boyfriend now for almost two years, and whenever I get the chance to go home, I will ride. In the picture below is two spots that I would stop and look at for awhile.

Baby Karma

So Karma and I went to the farm yesterday to go take a look at what my boyfriend was up to. Most Sundays I will go out to the farm and help around with as much as I can. I just enjoy being outside when it is nice out and it gives Karma time to run around and be a crazy lady before bedtime. Karma and I went around to check fences for the sheep and cows. Like I have said in past posts, the sheep love Karma, and the cows do not know what to think about her. I have a couple pictures below of Karma and the cows and sheep. The sheep usually let Karma lick their faces, but sometimes they do not like it and they will headbutt her. The cows go crazy and will start jumping around and try to headbutt her too if she gets near.

A Shepherd's Gift

I want to tell you a little about "A Shepherd's Gift" this week. When we started to get into the sheep business a year ago, it was not just because we wanted to raise sheep. Our seed salesman was talking to us one night about how he recently got sheep. We listened to him tell his story, and we really did not know what to think about it. The reason why we started to raise the sheep is because of the "A Shepherd's Gift" foundation. Our sheep have a molecule called GM1 which would help cure Huntington's Disease (HD). Not very many people know about this organization, but I have been to a couple meetings and have tried to get the word out further! I will include a link in the blog that has a short three minute video of a brief description about the organization. We have not had the best news about the organization in the past year, but we got a call about it this weekend and it sounds like they are saving enough money in the lab to start doing test trials. We will be breeding our sheep to get more GM1 molecules, so if the government allows the lab trials to be used in hospitals, they will have enough sheep to keep curing patients!  

http://www.theshepherdsgift.org/

Silage

Yesterday, I went out to the farm for the day to finish up our silage mound. The way we run our silage is one of them is out in the filled with the tractor chopping the corn stocks, then after the wagon is full, the next person in the dump truck will take it off back to the farm. That is where I was with my boyfriend driving the tractor to pack the feed together. All we did was drive back and forth on top of the chopped feed, making it air tight. We had to shape the pile like a dome, so when it rains, the water will just fall right off of it. We did that for about four hours, then We took the tarp, covered up the pile, then we threw tires on top of it. This is to try and get most of the air out from underneath so the food does not get moldy. We need the silage so we are able to feed the cattle all through the winter. We also will get loads of carrots and corn that the canning company do not use from Mankato. While I was up in the tractor, Karma wanted to come with us too. She jumped up into the tractor and road with us for a little while. Then, she saw her sheep friends running in the pasture, so she got excited to go see them.

Lambing

Okay, like I said in the previous post about my lamb, Daisy, I am doing this kind of backwards. So, last spring was our first time trying out our sheep farm. We purchased 40 ewes last September, and they had their lambs in the spring. It was probably one of the cutest, best springs I have every experienced. I loved the adrenaline rush of all the babies coming! We would go from one or two ewes having babies a day to seven or eight ewes having babies a day! There was a lot of preparation before the lambs arrived and we needed to make sure that we were organized. We needed to mark all the lambs with numbers, so if they were to escape from the pen where their mother is located, it would be simple to put them back together. We also need to ear tag all the girls. The boys are about to go off to the market, while we are keeping all the girls. I loved every second of this moment in the picture below. This was our first lamb of the year, Lucky. (Trust me, I do not name every single lamb. Just the ones I will remember.)

Daisy

Welcome back to my page! Okay, I am going to kind of do this in a backwards/out of place order, but I cannot resist to tell you about my baby, Daisy! In the picture below, that is Daisy. Daisy was born from a mother of three. It was her and her two brothers. Daisy's little brother was taken from his mother, because there was not enough milk for Daisy's mother to feed three lambs, so he was adopted by another mother ewe. Unfortunately, Daisy's mother had died the next day from internal bleeding from the triplets and her brother was not able to stay either. Daisy then was taken into the arms of me and my boyfriends wonderful mother. We bottle fed her for 35 days. Every morning, evening, and night. My boyfriends mother let her sleep in the front porch with Yogi (the sheep dog I posted about) so she was able to keep a close eye on her and get her food when she needed it. Daisy was the most house trained lamb I have ever seen. Daisy will continue to live at our farm, and hopefully be a great mother to her future lambs!

Farm Dog #3

This is my last farm dog for right now. We never know when someone in the family will bring home another one ;) This is Yogi. Yogi is a pest. Mainly because he is just a little puppy still, but he gets into everything. We bought Yogi, because we thought he would make a good sheep/cattle dog. Well, we were not lucky with that. We should have kept a closer eye on him, but when he was just getting used to the farm, his paw was stepped on by a cow. He did not break any bones, but it did scare him and he was not happy with the cow. So, he is now afraid of the cows and the sheep. When we would all go down to the sheep barn or walk around to check the cattle, he will not come with us. Yogi like to sleep and eat (what puppy doesn't?) He has his own chair in the shop where he spends most hours of the day just hanging out. He loves to play. He has a "brother" named Clyde. Clyde (a Yorkie) and Yogi will run around after each other, stealing each others toys.

One funny event (not so funny to the neighbors) was that Yogi went to the neighbors house and took all of their clean clothes off the clothes line. Their clothes were located all over the yard. We felt bad at the time, and were mad at Yogi, but honestly I thought it was really funny :)

Farm Dog #2

Alrighty, I have a few more of our farm dogs to share with you :) This next one is Dora. Dora is the farm dog that is located at my parent's farm. I bought Dora when I was in 7th grade! She turned 12 in April. I posted a "funny" picture of her, because as you see, she only has three legs. Well, she has four if you count the one that I drew in for her ;)

Dora was actually born with four legs. She was a great swimmer, and she could run so fast that she used to be able to keep up with us on the golf cart. Dora used to be great at catching rodents, birds, and she kept any kind of stray animal off of our property. When I moved away for college my freshman year, I received a phone call from my brother that Dora had gotten ran over. The first thing I thought was, great, my dog is dead on my first day away from the farm. But, Dora was lucky. She had NO broken bones and NO torn muscles. She was just sore. She babied her leg for so long that she lost all her muscles in her leg. So, she just hopped around and drug her gimped leg everywhere. THEN, I moved again. Of course, after a month of being settled in, the vet calls me. She says," Hi, is this Abbey?" I was kind of curious to why they were calling me, so I went with it. Her next sentence, "Dora is all out of surgery now. You can come get her tomorrow morning. She is going to be doing a lot better now with that leg off..." WHAT?! I hung up and called my dad, because nobody wanted to inform me that they were amputating my dogs leg. Let's just say, I am happy she was out of pain by getting it taken off, but man, someone could have at least gave me a heads up that it was going to happen!

Farm Dog #1

I wanted to share with you a few of the dogs that we have around the farms. The first one I wanted to share with everyone is Karma. Karma is a two-and-a-half-year-old Rottweiler. Karma lives with us in our house in town, and whenever my boyfriend goes to the farm, she is right along with him in his car. Karma is probably one of the funniest dogs I have ever seen with a great personality. When she is at the farm, her favorite thing to do is pretend that she is a sheep. She loves them so much that she cannot stop licking them the whole time she is with them. I have never seen a dog with so much love toward another animal.

Karma is a whole different dog when she is back home. She is very calm and lazy after a long day at the farm. We will give her a bath and after she is dried off, her favorite thing to do is go lay in the living room and watch TV with her roommates. One of her roommates put on 101 Dalmatians, and she loved it! Karma loves to sleep and snore. Also, her favorite thing to do while mom and dad are out of the house is go into the garbage and bring everything out. 

Background of the Farms

Being that this is my first post about the farms, I figured I would give you a little background information about the two of them. I grew up in a small community, graduated with 68 people, and I was born and raised on a farm. My parent's farm consisted of cows, horses, dogs, cats, a sheep and a few goats. Their farm would be more considered as a "hobby farm". We have always grown our own meat. My parents also have their own portion of land that keeps my dad pretty busy in the fall and spring.

On the other hand, I started dating my boyfriend two years ago, and I got myself involved with another farm. In other words, his farm is much larger in the animal department. My boyfriend’s dad and him have been beef farmers all their lives. We just started our sheep farm a year ago. We started out with 41 sheep, and after they had babies, we are dealing with 80 sheep. They have a large number of cattle too, about 240. The sheep are obviously a lot easier to take care of because of their size, but they do not do well in the heat. I love being at both farms, but I live closer to my boyfriend’s farm, so you may be hearing a lot more about his farm. I hope you guys enjoy my outside of school life !