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
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