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Tumbleweed

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Corn Off The Cob.

Kate leaves the trailer bucking.

Buck turns the lead rope loose and goes back in for Hatchet.

“Buck! You could hand me the lead rope.” Brad takes off after her.

Buck shrugs. “Thought you had her.”

It is cold. Overcast and windy. The forecast was for fifties today. I must have read the wind speed.

Tess and Peach are racing around, easily the most excited one’s here as we start out across the pivot to gather the cows.

Hatchet is humpy, but distracted by the electric fence on the ground. She high steps over it, snorts, and forgets about bucking.

“Mum! Sombrero doesn’t like Tess,” Fletch calls out and I hear the worry in his voice. Tess zooms by and the pony grabs herself. Tess zooms by again. Sombrero grabs herself again. Here she comes again.

Sombrero’s had enough of all this zooming about reaches out with a hoof and whacks her. Tess yelps and runs under Siri, who isn't that keen on her either.

CJ’s wife, Jennifer, is driving the caking pick-up. Not because she got up this morning and thought I’m going to drive the caking pick-up, but because Brad says Hey Jennifer, we need someone to drive the caking pick-up.

What he doesn’t say is - you need to start in low, you’ll miss first and end up in third, and you’ll kill it five times in the first hundred feet. She figures it out.

“Jake” yells Brad. “Come up front with me. Fletch, Buck, get up on the sides…”

Last time we moved these cows off this pivot, they ran off. Through fences, across corn fields, down the road.

Not the right road.

So we’re ready for them today. We got this. They’ll be going the right way, right off. No runaways today.

Then Kate gets tangled in a wad of old wire, the neighbours dog joins us, and the drag is quickly left behind.

But it’s OK. Jennifer is still in the lead, the cows are all moving in the right direction, and by the time we get to the highway they’ve settle down to a fast trot and the drag is catching up. Kind of. Not really. They’re strung out enough that the cows up front are out of sight over the hill by the time the tail end have crossed the highway and are sniffing at the railroad tracks.

The traffic waits patiently. Kind of.

The driver of the truck up front is out of his vehicle, chatting with Kelly. The cows are over, but no-one’s going anywhere, just yet.

The wind picks up as we crest the next hill and my hands and feet are a little cold.
And a search of my pockets reveals no hand warmers. Who moves cows, in November, without hand warmers? Apparently me.

The lead cows follow the caking pick-up off the road into the new corn field and, one by one, we reach the gate and wait for the rest.

I hear the rattle of the caker and the cows still coming down the road break into a trot and cross the wire, anxious to be fed. CJ and Dalton pull the wire up and hook CJ’s horse between the legs.

“Does it work well like that?” Brad asks, as the roan horse jumps around.

Jennifer dumps the last of the cake and heads for the mineral tubs.

“Is she going to put out the salt and mineral as well?”

“Looks like it.” Brad thinks about this for a minute. “Boys, go and help her.”

The horses snuffle through the corn stalks as the salt and mineral is unloaded. Kate finds a cob and bites down on the kernels.

“Ha!” Buck hands her another and rotates it as she chomps, then holds up the bare cob. “She’s eating corn off the cob.”

Tumbleweed

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