By now Nancy was questioning the wisdom of not using an electric fence and she agreed to let me put one up to corral the critters. I went to the farm supply store and got the posts, wire, insulators, and the fence charger and came back to finally stop our wayward boys from wandering.
I unloaded the supplies and drove in the posts in the ground across the pasture to cut off about half of the pasture area and started to put up the wire. Billy and Wade were "helping" me run the wire and I hooked up the charger and tested it out. Yep, it zapped the neon light and made it flash. That meant that it was working fine. The charger would send out a shock every few seconds. I was working on a wire that could be unhooked to act as a temporary gate and the boys were back by the fence charger. I guess it was just too much of a temptation because Billy told Wade "I bet you can't turn the charger on and off before it shocks Daddy". Guess what??? No, you can't turn a fence charger on and off before it will zap somebody. That's the way it works and I'm pretty sure that Billy knew it. Of course, he blamed it all on Wade. Anyway, I was the first one to be shocked by the new electric fence.
I was fairly sure that we finally could relax and keep the steers contained at last. Nope, I was working in the pasture one day and I saw Bandit push into the electric fence and get a shock. He would back up slightly and push again and keep pushing between shocks until he pushed the fence down. I thought, okay, that's it. They are going to the hamburger factory one at a time. I tied up Bandit and built a wooden fence around him while I fixed the electric fence for the others. I called the guy who transported our pigs to pick him up and take him to be butchered. We were going to have our first beef.
The others were better about getting out but I still sent them off one by one and we had a freezer full of good beef. The steers were big and not so lovable anymore and we were all tired of them getting out. I was afraid that the kids would not want to eat any of the meat. The first night that we had some of the beef Billy said "is this Bandit?" I was afraid to answer but I told him, Yes, it was Bandit. Billy said " it's good" as he took another bite. I told him it was steak and he said "Let's have it all cut up into steaks". I explained that it didn't work that way but there was no problem with anyone not wanting to eat the meat since it was all good and tender. It must have been all that exercise the steers got with us leading them back to the pasture.
I had left the large oak tree that we had camped under while we were building the house when I was clearing for the pasture. The tree was close to the main pasture gate and it was on high ground in case of a lot of rain. I would tie the steer who was leaving us to the tractor and lead it up to the tree so that the pickup guy could drive to it easily. I'm not sure but I think it was Janet who was driving the mower to bring the steer up to the tree. For some reason I had a rope tied to the tree already, one tied to the steer and one tied to the mower. The one tied to the mower was tied to the rope that was on the cow. Somehow, I got confused with which rope was which because I tied up what I thought was the cow and told Janet to drive the mower back to the house. Janet started off and in a few feet..... she was jerked to a stop. Yep, I had tied the mower to the tree. The stupid cow thought he was tied up so he did not move but he could have ran out the gate and went to Atlanta! Thus ended our cattle empire.
There are three kinds of men. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.
Will Rogers
The months went by and the calves grew fast. They had plenty of good grass, hay, and I gave them grain every day. Nancy and I learned some things that we never thought about being needed before..... Nancy, you hold up his tail while I put this rubber band thing on him. Watch out cause he ain't going to like it! We treated pink eye, learned how to drench a steer, and generally became at ease with them even thought they weighted hundreds of pounds each.
Yes they were steers now but still could be petted like a puppy. The boys had asked all along if they could ride them and I always told them that I thought that they were still too small but one day Billy asked to ride them and I said, go ahead, they were old enough. Billy looked at the steers and said, well, maybe not today. I never saw it but I found out that they did ride them and some of their cousins did too. As far as I know nobody ever got hurt.
I was working in the pasture one day and had brought the tractor and trailer up for something and I heard a ripping sound. One of the steers had ripped the seat cover off of the tractor. After that I left things outside of the pasture that were not needed right then.
Spring had come and we were tilling the garden. I was throwing the remains of collards, turnips, etc over the fence to the steers and they were eating it like candy. Genius that I am, I thought why pull the plant remains for them, I'll just hook them up to a log and let them drag it around while they feed themselves. How far can they go with a log chained to their neck. I thought that I was so smart to think of that and save me all that effort. Yep, you're right, don't ever do that. You show them the world outside of the pasture and all the good stuff to eat in the outside world and for some reason they don't want to stay in the pasture anymore.
Then the tilling was finished and we were ready to plant the garden and they didn't understand why they weren't being let out now. They would find any weak place and get out. They were a year old now and pretty big animals. Lucky they didn't know how much stronger they were than us because if we ever got a rope on them they would allow us to lead them back to the pasture and we could attempt to plug up how they got out.
We had a neighbor who was deathly afraid of the critters and when they got out that was where they headed. We would get a call that they were out and eating her flowers again. We would grab a few ropes and go get them. As time went on they got smarter and we didn't and they were harder to catch.
Nancy and I were home alone one day and they were out again. I had a good nylon rope but Nancy only had a small plastic cloths line. The plan was for Nancy to distract the cow while I rope him. Nancy talked sweet to him while I questioned his parentage and said a few unkind things to him and Nancy got close enough to put the clothesline rope on him. He then realized that he was caught and started to run. Nancy ran with him, he ran on one side of a telephone pole and Nancy ran on the other and she held on to that line. She had rope burn on her hands but she held on. Yep, I still say "yes mam" to her.
Government 'help' to business is just as disastrous as government persecution... the only way a government can be of service to national prosperity is by keeping its hands off.
Ayn Rand
Having successfully raised some pigs, we felt very confident to raise some cows. After all, when you ride around in the country you see folks sitting on the front porch resting and waving to you while the cattle peacefully graze in the pasture. How hard could it be to just put them inside a fenced in grass area and let them eat the grass and grow up to be steaks. We found out later that those folks on the front porch were probably resting after trying to catch the cows and get them back in the pasture.
I cut down most of the trees and made about a four acre pasture complete with a spring for water and hired the same man who graded our driveway to push off the stumps so I could plant grass. I had enough wood cut and split for many winters heat and we had a wood stove in the basement that would heat the whole house. We had a power outage once for over three days and we were toasty warm and life went on normally except for the over foot of snow and ice we had. We used the Riteway stove for much of our winter heat.
I planted fescue and, by the spring, we had a nice pasture started. All that was needed was to fence it in. We called a lady about buying two "Bottle Calves" and she said that she would deliver them. When she came she had three calves and said that we could buy all of them if we wanted. They were cute little critters and were very friendly. We thought that we could handle three as well as two so we bought all of them. Why not, that would just be more hamburger we would have later, right?
I had built a temporary fence and a shed in the back yard to hold the calves while I finished the pasture fence for their permanent home. We had to feed them bottled formula and a little feed every day like babies and wanted them close to the house until they were weened. We had a quick summer shower right after we got them and we ran in the house and got some towels to dry them off with because we couldn't have the little darlings get wet. Okay, we were dumb but we were dumb about a lot of things and still managed to get through it.
Mr. Davis, our neighbor down the road was my adviser on raising the calves. He had some cows and a huge Angus bull who would run across the pasture and skid to a stop when he got close to the one strand of electric fence that was only about two feet high. The power was off but the bull didn't know that. All he remembered was touching the electric wire with his nose when he was just a little calf and getting a good jolt. I wanted to use an electric fence but Nancy didn't want to shock the little cuties. She later changed her mind about the electric fence idea but more about that later.
We found that they seemed friendly because they would nose you all over because they wanted to get some milk from somewhere, anywhere. Feeding them was a real pain. I mean literally a pain because they would step on your feet with those sharp little hooves while you held the big bottles for them. We soon learned to stand outside the fence while feeding them and wear the heaviest shoes or boots we had. They would suck on the bottles so hard that they would create a vacuum in the bottle that would reverse the nipple into the bottle. You would have to unscrew the bottle and remove and reverse the nipple. They would also butt you while feeding them. Mr Davis said that was natural for them because they would butt their mom for more milk.
I came home from work one day and Billy said "Daddy, we have named the calves". Bandit, Molasses, and Sugarfoot were their names. I just knew that we would probably never eat any of that beef but after a year or so later they were not so sweet and not very lovable. They were sent to the butcher one at a time but more about that later.
I finished the pasture fence and the day came when we would move them to the new pasture. We tied a rope to them and led them to their new home with no problem. They were all fed hay, over an acre of grass each, and grain feed every day. I never tried to figure out how much the beef cost was after they were sent to their eternal reward over a year later.
A fool and his money are soon elected.
Will Rogers
