One less deer to tear up my electric fence

Grandson Arick got his deer yesterday evening.  It has a strange set of antlers:  three points on one side, five on the other.  So it doesn't make a perfect trophy.  Since Cliff is an experienced butcher, he went ahead and skinned it for him.  The butcher shop closed before they got it done, so they quartered it and put it in trash bags for Arick to put in his freezer overnight.  Silly boy left his deer tag at home, so it's a good thing the deer police weren't around, ready to pounce.

That was our evening's excitement.  It took Arick and Cliff forever to get the beast back to the house.  After being shot, the deer had jumped the fence and run along the railroad track behind our place, putting quite a bit of distance between himself and our property before he died.  So he had to be dragged quite a way through weeds and muck.  There's no way to get a vehicle into that area.  Once they got him on our property, the tractor bore the prize home.  

Thursday Cliff's older brother, Phil, came for a work-day.  Every once in awhile they get together at our place or Phil's and help one another with whatever needs doing.  Cliff had a disk in need of repair, so they fixed that.  After I fed them cheeseburgers and snickerdoodles, they went to the back of the place and got some wood up that Cliff will use to heat his shop this winter.  

The farmer who found Cliff's ad on Craigslist for the Oliver fenders came to pick them up that day.  Iris was curious about the dog in the back of his truck.  

Cliff had the fenders painted and secured on a pallet, ready to go.  (I'm seeing a smudge on this picture; I just recently replaced a camera that put a smudge on every picture.  I certainly hope this one is on the outside and will wipe off!)  

The farmer's friend drooled all over Cliff's 1855.  

This guy has three tractors for Cliff to paint, if he should ever decide to do that for extra cash.  He also has some Steiger tractors:  He said he'd be willing to teach Cliff how to operate them and turn him loose in the field.  Cliff saw those beasts; they are so big they dwarf the 1855.   
It's been an eventful couple of days, and the weekend is just getting started.  
Oh, we heard nothing from the man in Iowa, so I still have "my" tractor.  Cliff plans to paint it before long, and then the guy will be out of luck if he decides he wants it, unless he wants to pay a much higher price.  

A family weekend

A couple of Cliff's cousins visited this weekend.  

Cliff has lots of fun memories of visiting Aunt Juanita and playing with her boys, Art and Doc.  That's Art and his sweet gentle wife, Lois; she's seventy-mumble and still working.  Some of her younger co-workers call her Grandma, and ask her when she's going to retire.  We've seen them at a couple of gatherings in the past two years, but we've always met at Golden Corral.  You can't have a good visit at a restaurant.  

Since they called and said they were paying us a visit, Cliff's brother, Don, came all the way from Kansas.  He and his wife spent the night at Cliff's sister's house next door.  

Edna, another cousin of Cliff's, spent the night at our house.  If Cliff looks strange in this picture, it's because he's eating corn bread and I told him to quit chewing for a minute.  Edna likes my corn bread, too.  

Now I have to tell you, Edna is in her late 70's and doesn't make a habit of traveling a hundred miles to visit somebody; so we were honored to have her.  I would never have gotten well acquainted with Edna had it not been for the Internet.  I knew who she was. because we used to visit her mother, Cliff's Aunt Margaret, when we were newlyweds.  But I didn't know her as a person until we began our email correspondence.  I love this woman.    

We all had fun talking about old times.  (Iris gave Cliff her ball and was waiting for him to throw it; it's all about her, you know.)

You should have seen these two characters clowning around... Cousin Art and Cliff's brother, Don.

Even the oldest grandson was here; it's deer season, you know.  He was waiting until later in the day to hunt.  

Since Cliff's sister had been shopping all day (along with Don's wife), we went to her house after she finally got home; Edna wanted to see Rena, and meet Donald's wife.  Just call us (me, Edna, and Cliff) the three stooges

This is Edna's mother, Cliff's Aunt Margaret: Look at the previous picture... can you see the resemblance?  

Of course, the icing on the cake was when my daughter and her family showed up today with our great-granddaughter.  I wish all of you could have such an intelligent, beautiful great-granddaughter.  But of course, they broke the mold when mine was born.  

I jest.  
Even for a loner like me, family weekends are special.  

Did I mention that a former neighbor kid got a deer while hunting on our place?  

Life is good.

Perfect autumn days

Yesterday was one of those days when I kept looking for excuses to be outside, a crisp and sunny day.  I hung some clothes on the line to dry, harvested lettuce from the garden for our supper, and just strolled about in general.
Now, if you're one of my Facebook friends who only reads this nonsense on Facebook, you're going to miss the pictures.  This entry is all about the pictures.  
Click on any picture to make it larger.
When Cliff and I were eating dinner, I asked him what he planned to do next.  He responded that he had one more little chore to do at the shop, and then he was going to go cut some "ole snags" and clear the trail at the back of the place.
An "ole snag" can refer to a dead or broken tree, or one that's just ugly in general.  Cliff points them out to me often when we're on our daily walk.  And as for the path, it's almost at the lowest point of our property, and is wide enough for a tractor of any size to drive from one side of our forty-two acres to the other.  A dead tree fell across it this summer, blocking it.
"Let me know when you're going," I told him.  "I'll go along."
I had two reasons for wanting to go:  first of all, it was simply a day to be outside for whatever reason.  Second, I worry when Cliff is wielding the chain saw back there.  He's quite skilled in cutting trees so they'll fall in the right direction, but accidents can happen.
First, we went to clear the trail.

    What a mess, huh?  All that pile has to be moved.  At least there's no danger involved in this particular task.

We're so close to the back of our land that you can see the railroad tracks in the background.

It looks like an impossible task, does it not?

However, once Cliff had the tree cut into more manageable pieces, it wasn't so hard to push them to the side.

I'll bet the whole operation took less than a half-hour.

Just up the hill, Cliff noticed an ole snag, dead and broken.

Down it went.
Then we went back up the hill to the point, as we call it, the grassy, cleared area where you can stand and look across the Missouri River.  Cliff had another ole snag in mind, one we walk past every day.

Now, this one made me nervous.  It's on a brush-covered, steep hillside.
"Which direction do you think it'll fall," I asked.
Cliff figured it would fall straight downhill.
I put my camera in video mode and waited (saying little prayers for Cliff's safety all the while) for the tree to show signs of falling.  I did get a video.  Unfortunately, I had the camera turned to include the whole, tall tree.  This makes the video sideways, so you'll have to turn your head way to the side to view it.  It's only ten seconds long.  I could crop it and make it viewable the proper way, but it cuts off the top and bottom of the video.  And let's face it, the top is what's important.
OK, lean your head way over onto your left shoulder and watch what happened:



Yep, that's as far as the tree fell... not downhill as Cliff thought, but sideways.  Hopefully with the next strong wind-storm it will end up on the ground.  

Cliff was near me, loading the chain saw onto the tractor, when I saw a young doe come into view, looking this way and that.  He's hard of hearing, and I was whispering, "Cliff, Cliff... LOOK!"  
I edged toward him, hoping she wouldn't notice the movement and flee before he got to see her.  I finally got his attention when my lips were about an inch away from his ear.  Now that I think of it, I was so excited that I was whispering into his deaf ear.  No wonder he couldn't hear me.  
The deer finally did glance our way, pondered for a second, signaled an alarm with her tail, and left.  

Just icing on the cake of a perfect day.