Gates of Turley

Paige and Paris got to chase the cows back into the field again. It's becoming a regular thing. Ordinarily it would be bad to let the girls chase cows. They could get hurt running into the fence. But these are nuisance cows and they're eating Heidi's food! The fence guys came back to hang the gate and wire. The pasture is ready for the horses.

More Walnuts

We went down to gather more walnuts today. There are still quite a few.

More of the Fence

The fence guys came to work on the fence by the road. They put in all the posts and will come back after they set up to add the wire.


They had a big auger on their Bobcat. See all the walnuts on the tree in the foreground? We're going to gather some more tomorrow.

They brought the water for the concrete in the big tank.

They burned the concrete bags. We don't know why.

I planted the Bradford Pear trees today. We hope they won't become horse food.

Running with the Cows

Piper and Paris are learning to herd the cows back into their own pasture. Paris got out in front and started toward the cow on the other side of the fence. Lisa yelled "wrong cow" and she turned toward the cows in the yard. They ran them all the way to the back fence. The cows are really tearing up the fence. When the fence guys come to do the fence by the road this Saturday we'll see how much it will cost to get some good horse wire fence on the sides.

New Post

After thousands of emails asking why I didn't post yesterday I figured I better do something. I don't have any new original content. It was a long day at work yesterday and I didn't get outside much. So here are a couple of videos to keep you entertained. The first video was sent to me by my esteemed colleague Toga. The second one was just cool.

Final Pallet

We're going to Cynthiana to get the final load of hay. Just 30 more bales and we'll be set. We couldn't make it back to Richmond to get more free pallets so I made one with some scraps. The last picture is my hay rash.

The Haystack Thickens

It was nice and cool out this morning. It was about 55 when we got up and stayed nice all day. Dry, but nice. I went out this morning and hulled our bucket of black walnuts. There are still a bunch on the ground and even more in the trees. I'll have a good batch before long.


See my blue walnut gloves? My hands were brown for days just doing three or four walnuts. I got those gloves at Tractor Supply, they're supposed to be good for hazardous materials so they seemed appropriate. In case you haven't seen a freshly hulled black walnut that's it on the right. They are kind of green when they first come out but quickly turn black as they dry.

I used the wagon as a drying rack. They are quite black after just a few minutes. We went to Tractor Supply and got a roll of barbed wire to fix the fence. The cows are in our field almost every day and now they're eating Heidi and Bahloo's food. We also got some stuff to fix the chain link where the tree fell on it. I think we can fix it ourselves.

Then we went to get more hay for Bahloo. The hay man had an ad on craigslist for good quality hay for $3 a bale delivered for $3.75. I called him and said we needed a hundred bales but he was booked up for delivery and wouldn't get here for a while but he said "you can just use my trailer". So we did. Otherwise we would have needed four trips. We got all 100 bales on the trailer and the truck. His bales are bigger and tighter than the hay from Cynthiana but not as green. They were a lot heavier too, which became more and more apparent as we stacked it in the garage. I'll get some pictures of the huge haystack tomorrow, it was dark when we were finished and then we had to go back to return the trailer. This guy lives in Clark county over by Boonesboro. It was about 45 minutes over there an well over an hour coming back with the load.

Walnut Grove

Every town seems to have a subdivision called "Walnut Grove". There may or may not be walnuts there. We have walnuts. There are hundreds of them. A lot of them fell out of the trees last week when Ike came through here. We have one good tree and there are two huge trees in the next pasture. The bigger trees actually look fuller and greener than ours. We think it's because the cows hang out under them all the time.




This is our first bucket of nuts. I'm going to get more after I hull them. Lisa took the opportunity to sweep the loose leaves and hay out of the truck. We're going to get more hay tomorrow afternoon.