Our Labor Day

Labor Day for many means going to the lake and relaxing.  For many North Dakota farmer/ranchers that is not the case as we are harvesting.  However, Mark & I got the chance to go to the lake ... well, ummm, a few sloughs, but it was water - no relaxing however!!  Sunday evening a neighbor called to tell us our cows were out.  Mark & I got there and found it was cattle from two of our pastures.  I don't understand why they think they have to get out as they are belly deep in grass.  Anway, we each took one batch of the herd and returned them to their respective pastures.  We got back in the house about 10 PM  (yes, it was dark and there are no working headlights on the 4 wheeler providing a bit of a challenge for hubby).

Monday AM, after getting the combine serviced, the trucks emptied AND the auger moved to the next bin, Mark & I finally were able to go fix fence while Brett combined canola.   It was quite easy on one pasture - just close the gate!!  Hmmmm, wonder who left that open?  Anyway, the other needed fence built around the slough.  Luckily, the posts had already been installed so we just had to roll out the wire and get it stapled to the post.  We are using plastic posts (made from recycled items) so we could just staple the electric wire right to the post instead of using plastic offsets.    Before we got this project done, some of the cows got out again - this time into our corn.  The corn is about 10 foot tall so it is difficult to find them AND chase them, but Mark and Rufus got the cows out of the corn and back into the pasture.  We finished building the fence and hooked up the power for the fence (solar charger with battery).  Hopefully they will stay in now.  Lucky for us, most the crops around our pastures have been harvested, but it is still not good for them to be out.

Mark "at the beach".  Three years ago we were pumping water out of a dugout just to Mark's right.  Last year there was so much water here that we couldn't use our cross fences. 

This year the water is going down.

Mark hanging the electric wire.  You can see how high the water was last year by looking at the posts here.

This girl knew to find some shade to cool off.