Minor repairs, our disappearing cow, elderberries, logs

I had to stop at Lowe’s on the way home to buy some toggle bolts so I could repair a gate support on the back of the chicken coop. I was not in a particular hurry since Mama was not going to be at the farm. She had to make the trip to Muenster for feed. With the goats being taken to be bred, Mama and I struggled to determine just how much feed to buy to carry us through the month; but we will be close enough that if we fall short, we can make another trip to overcome the shortfall. Back to the gate. As it seems the case with all the “minor” repairs on the farm, it turned out to be more involved than I had anticipated. I have the coop yard separated by a fence and gate in the center of the yard. It was the center gate that had worked loose from the mountings. In order to fix it, toggle bolts were the only option. The problem I ran into was that I did not have a drill bit large enough to get the “wing” of the toggle bolt through the siding. Keeping the Banty’s in their yard and the other chickens out of the Banty yard only added to the frustration of wallowing out the holes to enlarge then sufficiently to use the repair bolts. It was one of those moments that you could have made a video worthy of any competition. Why the chickens wanted to relocate is beyond me, but it added a lot of time to the project. I did finally complete the repair and the gate is in better shape than when it was originally installed. (No chickens were harmed in the repair of this gate.)

While I was working on the gate Mama made it back from the feed store and because the cows heard her voice, they started bawling. Honestly, I do not try to keep up with the livestock since Mama takes her responsibility to tend to them very seriously, so I was surprised to hear that she had not seen Daisy for several days. We have been off-again-on-again with Daisy since getting her back home. We managed to get all our herd to walk through the gap I use to move the cows from our land to the neighbor’s land but Daisy was pacing and bawling on our side of the fence so we let her back onto the neighbor’s property. Our thought was that she may have a calf in the pasture there. The next day she came back to the gap to be let in for Mama to feed her grain and cubes. After that, she seems to have crossed to the neighbor’s pasture on her own. At least, that is what we are thinking at the moment. We walked the fence line to see if there was an obvious place for her to get through but did not find one. Mama called our neighbor to let him know and he will look over his property this evening to see if Daisy is there. Hopefully she is there and Mama can rest at ease knowing that nothing bad has happened to her very large pet.  What we can do to keep her in our pasture remains to be seen. We may have to take her to the stock sale along with the other two cows we were planning to sell this weekend if she will not stay home.

Just before dark, I cut as many of the elderberry fronds as I could. I was able to fill a very large container before it got too dark for me to continue and I only harvested one side of the bushes. It took me over an hour to wash the berries and strip them into a large pot so we could transfer them into freezer bags for later use. We filled six one quart Ziploc bags with the berries. I will look tonight to see how much more I have to collect before the plants go dormant, but I am fairly confident it will be as much as I got last night – if not more.

While Mama and I are in the area this evening to drop off the goats I need to go by and look at the logs for the log home package we have on the property in Bowie. I plan to get them moved this winter. The question is where to put them. If the logs are in good enough shape after several years of exposure to the elements, I will try to sell them. If that does not work, we will regroup and see what possibilities they will provide to Mama and me.

God always brings good of everything we give to Him; we just have to offer it and listen closely.