Playing Farm...

"It looks like I'm playing farm again, just like when I was a kid ... except this time everything is way more expensive!"

That (or something like that) was my quote to my dad today as we gazed out across seven of our Dexter cows and our herd bull ... on our farm for the first time. What started out as, "We are just going to get a bred heifer and a steer and do a one year experiment", has in a short time (about a year and a half) become a herd that will take three trips to bring here and another trip to bring the equipment. Sometimes I sit back and think it is cool, other times I'm a bit amazed, and sometimes I think about admitting myself to the crazy house... But, all in all I'm very excited that we are beginning the big move and bringing our herd home.

Thanks to a lot of help from my dad we were able to put up the fence we needed (in used cattle panels and old posts that we got from Becca's uncle) earlier this week and then finish up a little today. On Tuesday we pounded posts into wet and mushy snow. Today we pounded a few more posts into dry and blowing snow, but thankfully the snow has acted as insulation and the ground was still very soft underneath.

It was nice watching them all come out of the trailer and check out their new digs ... even though they are a little small. It will be a good area to feed them over the winter and a nice sacrificial area that we can allow to get torn up a bit in all of the freezing and thawing of a Southern Iowa winter.

Now my son and I will have a few more chores to do in the morning, but I think he is just as excited as I am!