Oh, to be a cowboy!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31aETl1BESU

My Heroes have always been cowboys…
I grew up a-dreamin' of bein' a cowboy, and
Lovin' the cowboy ways.
Pursuin' the life of my high-ridin' heroes,
I burned up my childhood days.


So… what does it take to be a cowboy?
(a) A cowboy hat
(b) a guitar
(c) chickens
(d) cows
Correct answer: (d) cows

What is it that cows like to eat?
(a) Pizza
(b) Cockleburs and Thistles
(c) Coyotes
(d) grass
Correct answer: (d again), Grass

When we settled in here at the ranch, the trick was to turn 80 acres of six foot tall weeds into useable pasture for cows. That took a 300HP tractor pulling a big plow (see earlier post) to get rid of the weeds. Unfortunately, I found all of the rocks which really do a job on plows. For every hour of plowin’ it takes about 10 hours of fixin’.
Fuel for the tractor….. $1000
Fertilizer……………. $3500
Sprigging 30 acres…… $3000
Seed for 40 acres ……. $1050
Rental of Spreader….. $400
Having the rain come at exactly the right time and having friends and neighbors lend you equipment…………. PRICELESS
Now it’s time to watch the grass grow (literally!), but in the meantime, I need to learn how to repair some barbed wire fence, and get rid of some mesquite trees.
(When does that romantic life of a cowboy begin?)

Waiting for the grass to grow!!!

Our little ranch of 80 acres is basically our yard, a pecan orchard (below left) , 2 stock tanks (below right) , 2 large fields and a smaller 'natural' grazing area where there are lots of mesquite trees, some natural grasses and weeds - and... fire ants. Our goal is to have producing pecan trees this year and 2 fields of grass worthy of baling for feed and for grazing for a small herd of cattle next year. Don't think it's an easy task to accomplish this!!! First you have to plow (disk) the field (below left) . Along with every hour or two of plowing goes 5 to 10 hours of repairing the equipment!!!! (below right is a broken rod) I think rocks grow in our fields! Mike had to return 2 or 3 times to pull rocks out from between the blades. Then after plowing, he retraces his steps with a cultipacker (equipment in foreground left) which breaks up the clods of dirt and smooths out the field for planting. Then you lay down fertilizer and then finally you lay in the grass seed and then pray for rain. If only the native grasses he planted will come up and proliferate this year, we'll be set because they're perennials. Our other field was planted about a month ago by 'sprigging' Coastal Bermuda. The sprigging procedure was interesting - instead of planting seeds, you plant roots and wait for them to take over. We now see some of the coastal up, but there are lots of thriving weeds to keep it company. The picture below shows the load of 'sprigs' and the machine on the right - plows a furrow, drops a sprig and the blades you see cover it up. You can see how many pieces of equipment we needed. Luckily most of the equipment was on loan and some we could rent. I cannot begin to tell you the cost, but this is no small undertaking as you can see. Now we have to keep the weeds mowed down until the grasses can take over and choke them out. Mike thought he was going to come down and spend his time watching the cows, but we don't have any!! Guess he'll have to watch the grass grow for now.

Where are they now?

Everyone has been amazed that Kitty allowed her kittens to remain in a box atop the table on the front porch and allowed me to handle them without moving them. But since I helped her birth them, I figure she has a level of comfort with me. I sure enjoy the instant access!! On Tuesday two of them discovered how to climb out of the box and began checking out the table. So on Wednesday I put the box down on the floor of the porch. Kitty had some 'words' (more like action with claws) with Sam about his proximity to her kittens! Poor Sam couldn't understand what he did to deserve her wrath!! Kitty is ALWAYS on duty!!! When I looked in the box before my bedtime, the kittens were gone!!! Thursday morning I spotted new activity just outside the side porch, so quickly figured out where she moved them. This was a 2nd choice spot though as she tries to house them in the garage whenever the door is open!
Thursday they were 4 weeks old and they are now engaging in Early Play 101. They should graduate to tougher courses soon! I'm seeing evidence of Porch Climbing 101 and Serious Pouncing 102.
Then it's time for a rest!!

But look at who feels left out and REALLY wants to be a part of the games!!

The good old days! UPT Class Reunion, 40 years later.

I just got back from my UPT (Undergraduate Pilot Training) Class 70-05 reunion. There were several 70-05 Classes, but ours was at Williams AFB, just east of Phoenix. The base is closed now - too bad, it was truly a garden spot – so we decided to hold it at the Hanger Hotel (http://www.hangarhotel.com/) in Fredericksburg, Texas.
Why Fredericksburg? Well, it turned out that more than 15% of the guys live in Texas, now, and besides the Hanger Hotel with its Officer’s Club was a cool place to meet.
Our class was at the height of the Viet Nam war. We started out with 92 guys in two flights, and graduated 63 a year later. 6 guys got washed back and graduated later, but the rest disappeared into the world of ground pounders.
The reunion was somewhat informal; the only ‘scheduled’ events were Happy Hour at the Officer’s Club, and a pay-as-you-go dinner on Friday night, and a Kegger/BBQ at Lady Bird Park on Saturday. The rest of the time was spent in small casual groups at the airport, catching up on the past several decades.
OK, so my first impression was “Who are all of these old guys?” After all, I haven’t seen most of them since we got our wings. Still, I recognized most of them right away. And, like the pixilated display in a simulator, we all started to ignore our age and picked up ‘just like old times’.
It was particularly interesting to see what all of the guys had accomplished. Many had recently retired from the airlines, some were CEO’s of their own businesses, and others retired from the Air Force with chilling (and confirmed) stories of their exploits and achievements. Naturally, we figured that we were simply ‘an exceptional group’.
For those of you who are interested, I set up a website for the class so we could post any photos that were taken at the event. http://willy7005.myphotoalbum.com/

Curiosities!!

I just thought it interesting that today the gestational ages of my grandsons are 22 weeks 5 days and 25 weeks 2 days - just a quick alteration in numerical order!!

The other coinkidink came this afternoon when a friend stopped by. The moment she looked in the box, she said "Looks like you have all females". She hadn't touched a one of them!!!!! Of course I asked - "how could you know without even looking??? " She said that whenever cats have 3 colors (like calicos), they're always females!! All 4 do have whitish faces with some of mom's orangey color along with the dark stripes, and sure enough - on inspection all 4 were females on the bottom's up test!! Did anyone else know this little fact????

TEXAS = BIG

Folks in Texas do everything in a BIG way! I grew up on a farm for several years when I was young, and I remember helping load bales of hay onto a flatbed trailer to haul back to the barn and we had an conveyor belt that we threw the bales on to get them up to the hay mow. We've been buying hay locally until we became acquainted with Ed Sweat - one of those entrepenurial folks I alluded to previously. I think Ed has done about everything in his almost 80 years, and he still puts in a full day's work sprigging fields (more on this when the grass is up) - but we discovered that Ed supplies the local feed store with hay. He has BIG bales which he unrolls and rebales into around 72 smaller bales. So we bought one of his big bales and invited him to dinner. He delivered it with a backhoe just in time for dinner! How big, you ask??? Each bale weighs in the neighborhood of 1500 pounds! Check out the size of this bale:

So after dinner and fascinating conversation, it was time to go home. Here's Ed heading home in his 'Cadillac'. Where else can you invite someone over and they arrive and leave on their backhoe!

One more picture I can't resist! Kittens at 3 weeks of age - gonna jump out of that box any day now!!!

'Our Town'

(click on any picture to enlarge)

Reminiscent of your tour of Clovis (Trav/Pam) I thought I'd give y'all a little tour around our new home town! So folks, sit back -- this is Olney, Texas, population 3,396 - 45 miles south of Wichita Falls, 100 miles west of Fort Worth. We're a 3 traffic light town. This is Main Street (downtown area):

As you can see we don't have to worry about rush hour traffic or finding a parking space. Our church is right on this main drag (Olney has 17 churches!) and you'll note in the sanctuary, that we have an awesome pipe organ!

In addition, we have 2 banks, 2 feed stores, 2 hardwares, 1 drug store (which is also a gift shop and bridal registry), 1 motel (below), 7 insurance agencies, Stewart's Food Store - our 1 grocery (below), a golf course and an airport. We have 4 fast food chains (DQ, Sonic, Subway, Golden Chick) (right) and 5 other restaurants. (Across the street from DQ is our new Dollar General and a Movie Gallery). Probably the best restaurant in town is Gandy's - (below) they have great hamburgers and chicken fingers.

Of course we have City Hall, Young County Municipal Court, a police department and an awesome volumteer fire department.

We have a 25 bed hospital (below left) and a very nice library (below right)which is the FIRST combined community and school library facility in the country!. The elementary school is beyond the trees in the picture and the High School and stadium are behind the library. Olney is VERY supportive of all school sports teams and the town really comes out on Tuesday and Friday nights to cheer them on!

Olney is also known for it's annual One Armed Dove Hunt (Sept); Rodeo (May); and many many community events. It's also the home of Air Tractor (agricultural spray planes).

Of course there's more to this community than what I can photograph. It's really about the people. They are friendly, helpful, and welcoming. They're very resilient, entrepreneurial, hard working and family loving folks. It may not be the fanciest town - after all, we don't have a WalMart!!! But we REALLY love it here and we love the people and are finding many wonderful new friends.