Saturdays

Saturdays are cattle days around our house.  Well, everyday around here requires some form of cattle duty that must be done.  But Saturdays are the busy days.  From 7:00 am until the job is done, Jody is working. Moving cows, putting out hay, checking fences, filling water troughs.  And he takes Sam and Jack with him every Saturday and often takes Will for a large part of the day.  And while I am grateful for the slight break, I am more grateful for the time they are spending together and the lessons they are learning at such a young age.  My boys know their livestock and sometimes I even get lucky enough to catch them hard at work.

Someone left a gate open and we had a few escapees who went on a sightseeing trip to the feed lot.  If only they knew what "feed lot" meant, they'd probably have stayed put in the pasture.  Jody followed them up the hill.

And my babies stood at the top of the hill, preventing the cows from going further up the path and forcing them to head toward the gate.

Once all the cows were past them, my babies ran in behind them, knowing their job was now to shut the gate.

We had a couple of stubborn guys that wanted to test the waters and see if they could avoid being put back in the pasture.  We'll call them Jack and Will, just for story-telling purposes.

My babies let out a few loud "Yaahhs" and threw their arms up in the air and sure enough "Jack" and "Will" ran through the gate.

My boys sprinted to shut the gate behind the escapees.

Unfortunately, "Jack" and "Will" ran further than they should have and had to again be led to the right opening.  Jody yelled for Sam to come inside the gate with him and for Jack to shut the large, metal gate behind him.

Jody ran the misbehaving boys back around a barn, right towards my oldest child who was standing his ground, just like his Daddy told him to do.  There is no picture of this because I was shaking to much to hit the shutter and was too busy yelling, "Jody!  My baby!  My baby!  Is that safe?  My baby!  They're running towards my baby!"  But my boy stood firm and those cows wanted no part of him or his crazy, screaming Mama that was flailing her arms and hanging over the gate.

In they went and Sam proudly shut gate behind them.

The boys were hot and tired and I rescued them from the injustice of child labor and brought them home to enjoy the air conditioning and cold milk.  After dinner we headed back down to the barn so they could finish up their work.  Will busied himself finding stray piles of hay.

He gathered handfuls and giggled as he headed over to the baby calves.

He dropped his hay quickly.

And then he watched, hoping the calves would rush over to eat.

And when they didn't he copped an attitude and started fussing and pointing at those poor, little calves.

Thankfully, his Daddy had just what one calf wanted and Will got a front row seat for dinner.

Sam stepped in to finish feeding the sweet, little calf.

And we discovered that he really needs to improve his grip.

Jack was suppose to be helping too, but I turned to find him scaling the gate.

He ditched his job to show Crawford a little love.    

Before we called it a night, Will stalked a barn cat.  He stayed in this position for a ridiculous amount of time.  I think we may have a catcher in the family.

And I ended my evening by taking my first look at the latest additions to the farm.  Needless to say, the sight of these things scared the @#$% out of me.