Pillow

My Pictures by CHRISTIAN

Hi, this is Christian and thank you for coming to see my blog.  I am 6-years old and my mommy is typing for me.  

Here I am:

Me on the lawn mower

I did this picture from school.  I just wanted to show you that this is my Kindergarten work.  

Work

I did this in Art class.  Umm, my art teacher told me to do that.  Every day she asks me to paint something.  

Zebra

This last picture I drew in class because everyone was so, so, slow of work.  I drawed it on the back of my paper work.  It's me and those red things are the boosters. The sword has some blood on it but you can't see.  And I killed all the zombies, so you can't see them.  

Zombie killer

This is from my school Spring Fling.  It was hard to get those two silver and gold eggs.  Each egg had something inside, like…a chocolate bar or toys or gummies or money.  My favorite part of the Spring Fling was hunting for eggs.  We also won a Nerf Gun basket.  

Spring Fling

Thank you for reading my first blog.  I tried to make it long but my mom said that people get too bored of reading long blogs.  Thank you for reading.  This is Christian.

A Visit To The Oliver Farm

A blog entry by SEBASTIAN:

Last weekend we went to the Oliver's farm in Jacksonville, TX to buy our new bull, Samson.  

My Mom and Ms. Amanda

The drive was extremely long and felt like flying to Paris.

The Green Ferrari

Here I am feeding the Oliver's cows.  They were very sweet and pushed each other to get to the treats.

The cows and I

Here is Samson in the trailer.

Samson

This is my brother, Thomas, with Samson.  Tommy says, "Samson is very cute and very hard to catch. And very friendly and can have good fights with other bulls.  I think."

Tommy and Samson

Mr. Oliver let us pull 5 onions out of his garden.  Thomas and I both picked 2 and Christian picked 1.  

My brothers and I with the garden

I LOVE onions.  So, I went and washed one of my onions off and took a BIG bite out of it.  My mouth started to burn!  But, it tasted extremely good.  My mom did not love my onion breath.  I even asked her if she wanted a bite.  She just said, "My husband would not kiss me with an onion breath!"

My lovely onion and I

Here is Meat Loaf meeting Samson.  Meat Loaf is a steer that we are going to eat.  Meat Loaf was all protective of his girls. 

Meat Loaf swagging up to the fence

Meat Loaf and Samson had a little fight, because Meat Loaf didn't want to share his girls with him.  Samson is on the other side of the fence because we don't want him making babies with the girls yet.

Bull fight!

Thank you for reading my first blog entry.  I hope you enjoyed it.  

Sebastian

From Rainbow to Recluse

So I dashed outside this evening when I saw the rainbow through my kitchen window.

SW rainbow

And then I turned around and saw this:

NE sunset

 Which then became this:

What a spectacle.  Believe me, even better in the flesh.  Never ceases to amaze me how it's never been repeated, nor will it.
Thank you.  

After adjusting the focus in my viewfinder, Bullet came into sight…

"Don't mind while I drop a few and watch the sun set…"

Wasn't long before I was joined by the locals.

Magnolia bearing down

And Missy Beatrice:

14 months old now

Time for clean up and look who I found in my bathroom:

Old Fiddleback 

So…. for those of you who aren't American, I'll take the liberty of sharing with you that this is one of 6 venomous spiders in America, known as a Brown Recluse.  Possibility of death to the sick, elderly and under 7 years of age, makes it massively a wee bit scary.  

But, FEAR NOT,... I called in The Mad Scientist,

...who scared this poor little thing half to death.  He currently resides in a plastic cup, awaiting his fate (close inspection by 3 Young boys).

Night!

Down-right CRAZY weather!

This afternoon went from a gloriously breathless day, to down right ugly beautiful!  Check out the pics.   Hands-up the biggest hail I've even seen in my life!  As my friend Leslee said, "Welcome to North Texas!"

Somethin's a brewin'

Can you say 'Tornado Warning"???

Double cap, means
double hail protection, naturally

Yup!

Our driveway

A bit of aftermath clearing

Sunset over fields of hail

VET Excursion

"Guess who's going to the vet today? Do-daah, Do-daah!"

Bovine Beatrice

Round-up:

This meadow lady, at the encouragement of every farmer we've met (for reasons of safety), will be losing her horns.  Then everyone can play nice around the water trough.

Maggie

Everyone seemed a little nervous, all huddled around.

Sammy, Maggie, Meat Loaf & Beatrice

Even the donks came sidling up to see what was going on.

After loading the three girls, Meat Loaf became visibly irritable, pacing up and down beside the trailer. He started moo-ing (the first we'd ever heard) and was clearly unhappy that his girls were being taken away.

The 20 minute journey to the livestock vet went smoothly.  We pulled around the back and let the professionals take over.

Shoot! I mean chute

There are my girls!

"But I thought you said we were going to the park"

I guess they don't call it a
SQUEEZE chute for nothing

And just when the vet thought he was going to have a quiet afternoon, Thousand-and-one-questions arrived.

Peanut Gallery
(Do you see what happens when
you let your kids dress themselves?)

The girls received their shots and the two Hereford's were dehorned.  I say that like it was nothing.  Truth be told, it was an ear-curling, nasal-assaulting, visually traumatic event that both the hubby and I would like never to repeat.
Now the boys, on the other hand, watched with morbid fascination as the vet used his full body weight to manually clip the horns off and were transfixed by the pouring of bright red blood.
UGH!

"Look Mom, no horns!"

Anyway, we survived to tell the tale and headed straight to Dairy Queen,… as any good Texan would.

The End Of Lunch

A couple weeks ago, our dear farming mentors, N & S, graciously allowed us to purchase half of one of their pasture-raised, home-grown steers (after the not-too-surprising realization that Walmart beef prices aren't keeping up with it's reputation).  

This was a new adventure for me as I'd never experienced "up-stream" meat processing (OK, so I made up that term), and I was quite thrilled to witness how this all goes down (minus the blood).

We headed north into rural Texas and pulled up to Fischer's Meat Market (www.fischersmeatmarket.com) in a "German" town called Muenster.  Then got in line...

The Rig

'Lunch' seemed calm and unaware of his pending doom.  He was a beauty - half Brahma, half Angus - Brangus?  We had no doubt he'd be good eatin' - as they say around here.  He was born to be eaten - just the right amount of fat and a dedicated vegan ;)

Lunch  

We placed our bets as to how much his live weight would be. 

The Biggest Loser Weigh-In

After silently thanking our Creator for the gift of this magnificent animal, we said our tearful good-byes (I probably imagined that) and headed inside to chat with the head butcher.  

For the most part, I pretended like I knew what I was ordering (filet mignon, T-bone, ribeye, flank, skirt, striploin, chuck etc. etc.)  but somehow it all worked out.  

...17 days later, Lunch was packed, deeply frozen and settled comfortably in to my freezer. 

First Visitor of the Year

CityGirl came to visit us for 5 days from Denver, Colorado.  The consensus from the boys was, "Can she visit us every weekend?"  We love this girl.

We broke her in with building a loading shute, feeding the inhabitants and checking out the turf.

(Secretly petrified)

Known in Texas as a COW PIE

It took about two weeks for the cattle to allow a bit of head rubbing.

With my boy Meat Loaf