Now I'm a Farmer, and I'm Digging, Digging, Digging, Digging, Digging

Can you identify the source of the title of this entry? It’s a song that features the line, "It’s alarming how charming it is to be a-farming," which always cracked me up as a kid. And this weekend was spent charmingly farming in Yorktown. We really enjoyed the time away and in Ursula.

Beautiful, but spiky. These were all around the farm.

Picking Ursula up went nice and smoothly and there was nothing new broken. Hooray! There is a heck of a lot of wild mustard on the sides of the new toll road. It’s like they planted it there on purpose, but no, they couldn’t have! Once off the toll road, there were many lovely wildflowers, but it soon got too dark to tell!

Lee parks Ursula. Scary.

As you can see, Lee had to park Ursula in the dark, and there were no helpers around, either. But soon Nephew Chris and his wife Beth (and two teens we did not see until the next day) showed up so we had someone to chat with as Lee set everything up. Chris has been working very long hours in his new job, but managed to stay up and get caught up on things until pretty late.

Saturday

The next morning, we bounced out of bed (for us, anyway) and put water in Ursula’s tanks. I say tanks, because, oops, Lee accidentally filled the black water tank at first. Guess that helped clean it out. Eventually we had water in the right tank, too. Of course, that led to something else. DANG IT Ursula still leaks every time we run water. We have TWICE now asked repair places to fix it, but they say, "We don’t see a leak." Well, why then do we completely soak towels every time we wash a dish, take a shower, or wash our hands in the bathroom sink? It is a poltergeist? (All rhetorical questions)

My first goal of the morning, of course, was to set my eyes on little Oscar the Donkey in person! The herd obliged by being fairly close. He is, indeed America’s Cutest Donkey, as I have dubbed him. Judge for yourself.

Oscar Feels Snoozy

Heading off to greener pastures

Oscar really, really loves the calves. Chris told us that after he experienced the electric fence the first time, he herded the calves away from it! How sweet! He is still pretty shy around people, but will get within a few yards of you, and looks curious and interested, not afraid. I will be happy to take my time with him until I can work with him more and tempt him with horse cookies.

Someone, perhaps Oscar, likes the mud. But isn’t he cuuuuute?

After I bonded with the donkey for a while, and Ernest Sr and Chris were working on getting ready to plant some stuff, Lee, Beth and I went on a walk around the farm. I tracked it by GPS using my RunKeeper software I just started using for my healthy walks. It was pretty funny, because we kept stopping to look at flowers, bees, pipeline equipment, dirt, and giant oil derricks, so the average speed was pretty pitiful. On the other hand, we saw lots of stuff.

A Huisache tree in bloom

These were blooming all over the place. I know they are a weed tree, but they are really pretty and create lovely landscapes (I hope Lee will add some photos he took of them with his good camera). If you wish to learn more, here is a link to the Huisache. Lee notes there a town named Weesatche, which turns out to be the next town down the main road from Yorktown. You know, on the way to Goliad (where ARE all these places??). And that the way I originally tried to spell the tree (Weesatch) also works. It is a type of acacia tree, which I knew by the leaf shape.

Lee and Beth share a joke.

This is a new pipeline that went right through the cornfield. After it was planted. That’s OK, they compensate.

The equipment really compacts the soil. They will put the original dirt back on, then Chris or Ernest Sr. will till the heck out of it to make it usable again next year.

It is cool to have your name on the stick.

The pipeline is coming from this monstrosity, which is across the road in "Betty Ann’s" field. The neighbor.

Once the drilling is over, this will barely be visible. The storage tanks are much bigger and more of an eyesore. I have really learned a lot about the oilfield industry lately, both its good and less good points.

The oil companies are as busy as…well, you get it.

At the end of the walk, we had a nice chat with the people who guard the entrance to the farm (that is because another well is going up behind the farm, and it’s easier to get to it on the road that goes to the first well). They apparently spend their winters guarding work sites (they check every truck that goes in, day or night, which does make you feel more secure). They then go do a bit of spring on the coast of Texas, then they go back up to Minnesota where they help manage an RV resort. What a fun life! Well, other than being on call 24/7 to keep track of the comings and goings.

Lee seems to have a thing for flowers and barb wire. Maybe it’s like leather and lace.

After more chatting back at the family compound, Beth and the teens left, and I did a bunch of knitting until Lee’s dad declared he was hungry, and that it was too windy to do any planting. It was like 4 pm. But, OK, it was a fine time to eat if all you’d had all day was a SlimFast bar. We went to the Texas Outpost, which is the fanciest and newest restaurant in town (as opposed to Aunt Di’s, which is much older). We were pleasantly surprised at how good the food was. I remembered it was St. Patrick’s Day only because the waitress had on a green lei. I guess it’s not a big holiday in German/Polish/Mexican land. I saved half my delicious sirloin for another day, and mostly ate the really good steamed fresh vegetables.

Lee had a hard time deciding which butterfly picture to use. He finally went for action over pretty.

To top off the excitement of the day, Chris worked on fixing the broken riding lawn mower. Lee was advocating a new one, since the thing is like 30 years old, but no, all that was left to fix was a fuse that had arced. Chris and I went off in search of a fuse and ice cream for Lee’s dad (wow, he IS feeling better--eating like crazy!). Oh, and I needed carpet cleaner since someone had tracked cow poo all across Ursula’s carpet. The fuse was eventually located at a convenience store, and sure enough, the mower ended up running like a charm. It is so much fun to watch someone who’s good with machinery and fixing things. Makes me miss my dad a lot.

Lee is amazed at the menu options

At night, we watched some weird TV show and listened to complaints about digital TV and how it is no good for rural people.

The derricks are pretty at night, even if they are very noisy.

And we had a cool view of two planets at bed time.

Sunday

You’d think this would be enough excitement for one visit...but no! There’s still Sunday! Sunday was full of excitement because the plan was to get up early and do the planting of the "grazer"—which I am told is a type of sorghum that will be there temporarily before they plant that field in hay (used to be for corn--they are moving toward more cattle and less corn). I entertained Lee’s dad while we waited for Chris. Ernest Sr. was chomping at the bit, but Chris gets lots of work calls he needs to deal with. The men got the planting thing on the old tractor, which was to be followed by the new tractor tilling in the seed.

Seeds ready to plant.

During all this I took photos of the cattle and Oscar. Believe me, this is a tiny selection.

Oscar is greeting his best friend, the bull calf that was already born when the new cows came. He is, unfortunately, about to go away, because he wants to be a bull. Luckily, Oscar also likes the other calves.

Left calf is from #14 and is the son of that weird Brahma bull from last year. He and #16’s similar calf are both really pretty and will get to go be Daddy calves. The middle is one of the new cows’ calves, and the right is a female Charlois cross from one of the new calves--the only cow calf they’ve had in at least three years. The other little white one is very pretty, too.

I just couldn’t resist this one of Oscar licking his little friend. They were rubbing their heads on each other. Really shows you how animals do have friendships.

At that point I decided it was real exercise time and took off on a long walk. The flowers were prettier than I have ever seen them there (Lee’s dad has not yet killed them all like he usually does). Here’s some of what I saw.

This is the other tree that is in bloom. It smells great. It is some type of mesquite. Another weed, but one that does serve some purposes as well. The blooms make great honey and the wood makes nice barbecue. However, I do not want any in my pastures. That is what blinded Pardner the Horse.

I mainly took this picture to record the yellow flower, which is I guess a primrose, but not one I "know."

When I got back from the walk, I found the planting operation at a halt. Something had broken on the tiller or cultivator or whatever the attachment is (argh, I am a bad farm person). Chris switched the bad one up to the front and put a good one on the back. Soon they were up and running again. Lee and I helped by fetching things and banging on dirt clods. Those durned City Folks.

Yep, it’s broken, all right. Lee’s dad just wants to get back in the tractor.

Hooray, he is back in his favorite spot!

Once that was all over, it was time to eat again. Aunt Di’s was too full (we didn’t beat the Baptists to their after-church gathering spot, apparently), so once again we had to haul all the way out to Cuero (really not that far) and eat at Don Bravo’s, land of questionable cleanliness but delicious food.

This captures the essence of Don Bravo’s. Nice weeds, huh. Not sure what that hanging thing is.

Everybody got huge plates of food. Well, I didn’t. I figured huevos rancheros would not be too big, and it wasn’t. Yummy eggs totally smothered in some brown sauce, with salad-like substance and beans. I just ate a bit of the beans and didn’t use tortillas. Another successful diet mean while eating out!

After lunch, we spent a while working on Ursula, and now she is spic and span. This made me look up the term spic and span, which is from the 1500s in England and has nothing to do with Hispanics! Who knew? Anyhow, we reluctantly left the family member sand America’s Cutest Donkey around 4, and made it to the RV storage place before dark. Other than leaving wet towels in the shower (leftover from dealing with the leak), I think we successfully completed the trip without forgetting a lot of stuff.

What’s next? Why, I think Ursula’s next big outing will be to an actual campground in two weeks, with our church camping buddies! A state park she has never been to before! Lee may go out to Cameron again next weekend, but probably sans RV this time, so he can take the trailer and Hilda the Utility Vehicle up there.

Farmorama

Suna says: It was time for our monthly trip to see Lee's dad (delayed so I could sing a solo at church last weekened), so we rumbled off as soon as I could get away from work. Lee had the day off, so he had Ursula ready to go as soon as I got home. We had a very pleasant drive with little horrible traffic to deal with, though now that it's fall, it's hard to get anywhere before dark. I remembered the blanket that was supposed to go in Ursula when I finished knitting it, plus Lee had bought me a lovely pansy plant. We looked quite civilized!

Ursula's interior with her nice blanket and pansies.

We did get to the Farm in time to chat with Lee's dad and Chris, so all was well. We enjoyed looking at brochures for the nice new tractor Lee's dad had bought that day. His trade-in on the old tractor was for more than he's originally paid! Wish it worked like that with cars! I am go glad Lee's dad is enjoying his time right now. He looked pretty good, though his bladder cancer treatment is going slow. We hope it can get going again after he gets checked out again. After Lee's dad went to bed, we talked to Chris for a long time--there's so much to catch on every time we visit, plus there is all the necessary joking, kidding and poking fun that has to happen. We heard lots of owls and coyotes.

Chris and a tree

We woke up at a reasonable time Saturday morning. It had been pretty chilly at night—we inaugurated Ursula's heating system, which worked just great. Lee made us a nice breakfast of eggs and toast, then Chris brought kolaches, so there was plenty of breakfast. We spent most of the day hanging out at the Farm. I was trying out my new roper-style boots and Stetson hat that Lee had bought me last week. Both worked out GREAT. I had gotten the hat a size big, and the guy had put some foam inside it. That has made the hat incredibly comfy. I wore it all day Saturday and it did not hurt a bit.

Chris and Suna survey Dad’s domain

The new DeWitt County icon

We all walked over to the pad to see how the oil company had painted the well and storage equipment all a lovely shade of tan. Chris and I climbed the stairs up to the top of the storage tanks (they store water and only smelled a little like the city of Luling). You could really see a long way--lots of the new RV parks that have sprung up, and plenty of oil equipment.

Quite attractive water storage tanks

View from the tanks, with Lee and his dad discussing the lovely tan paint. The green stripe is the grass that got patiently irrigated all summer. Soon it will be a pasture.

Much of our time walking around was spent in the endless quest to eliminate the evil "smell apples" from the fields. Lee's dad hates them. After a great deal of searching, I found that these are an invasive species called the dudaim melon (or smell melon or apple melon, thus the colloquial smell apple). They do seem prolific, and pretty useless. Apparently they came from Iran--those darn terrorists. OK, really they came from Persia, which was before Iran was there, so no bad intent, ha ha.

Smell Apples

Suna actually pulled the smell apple pictured above. See! Here she is pulling it.

The grass that Lee's dad so diligently watered during the drought has taken hold and looks really good. He and Chris have also planted a field with a mix of oats and rye grass. We spent some time trying to figure out which were the oats and which were the rye--as seedlings they look pretty similar, but by pulling a couple up and seeing what seed was attached, positive identification was achieved. Judging from Lee's photos, it was pretty hilarious.

This is what Dad’s jigs looks like from the ground. Some of the runners are almost four feet long. Hard to imagine that it started out looking like hay being plowed into dry soil.

Dad calls these, “Those damned yellow flowers." Suna calls them by their botanical name. I just call them “pretty.”

Here they are up close and shady

This coy beauty posed for us on the walk back to the house. Growing up, I never knew scissor tails were so colorful.

#10 lets Suna pet her nose.

Speaking of hilarious, when we got back we were chatting, when one of the cows (good ole #10) came up and looked like she wanted something. She had heard the rattle of the paper bag my knitting was in and had hoped it was a feed bag. She is like a larger version of Scrunchy the Pug I guess. So, Chris gave me a handful of feed and after a bit of patience, she came up and ate it out of my hand. A bit slimy, but really a lot of fun to be licked by the big, black tongue! Then ALL the cattle showed up. I ended up quite the popular human, and got to pet one of the little bulls quite a bit. Both the little bulls are very sweet—too bad they have to go somewhere else so that inbreeding doesn't happen. They are each nursing off the same cow, since one of them decided to wean her calf. The poor nicer cow gets quite bothered when they both are thirsty at the same time. Mostly they eat grass—they are almost a year old.

Suna feeds good ole #10.

Dad and Chris recently planted a mixture of oats and rye grass to feed the cattle through the winter, but some other things are coming up in the mix. Here Chris and Suna try to discern which seedling is which variety.

As if that were not enough excitement, we then decided to head to Cuero for an early dinner. We did make a detour to see some donkeys, since I had mentioned, oh, once or twice, that I am interested in a spotted donkey. Yep, they were pretty nice looking donkeys down by the Yorktown cemetery. Most restaurants in DeWitt County close on Saturday afternoons, but we found a Mexican restaurant that was open. The food was really good and the servings were immense, but gee whiz the place was filthy. And the paint peeling. Well, as long as the food prep area was OK [I wouldn’t count on it; some things you’re better off not knowing], so were we.

Back at the Farm we enjoyed a nice sunset and watched Lee take photos. Then, we had a rather surreal experience watching a 1970s Lawrence Welk Halloween show rerun on PBS (watch link for a laugh--for a bigger laugh do a Google Image search on "Lawrence Welk Show Halloween" and note how many Saturday Night Live images actually appear). This is the highlight of the paternal week. The weird part was that while all the singers were dressed in Halloween costumes, the songs were mostly spirituals. Most...interesting.

Lee's dad thought he was coming down with a cold, so Chris and I went to the store and got him a variety of zinc, vitamin C and other things to head a cold off. It's always fun to go to the rural grocery store. All that got everyone tired out, so we returned to Ursula and relaxed with Chris a while, then turned in. Coyotes were really, really loud last night. And lots of mooing. Something must have been going on!

From the water storage tanks, it looked like the sky was on fire.

Dusk was nice, too.

Later that night, you could see the shadow of the moon through the trees. You could also see a couple of planets in opposites quarters of the sky, but those pictures didn’t come out well. I need a faster camera.

Eek! Something is eating the moon! And there’s a lens flare watching.

This time exposure of a car going down the road shows just how bumpy it really is.

This morning (Sunday) we had to get up early so Lee could go to a meeting at church at noon. We couldn't get there in time for choir, and I felt bad about that, due to there being only one actual soprano left. Ursula apparently did not like that, so she decided to make her alarm go off, trying to tell us the levelers weren't back up all the way, even though they were. Lovely. But we had a nice time going home a slightly different way, and made it in a timely fashion.

Next week we hope to get up to the Ranch (as opposed to the Farm) for rural camping in scenic Milam County. I hope we make it there by dark, since I am not exactly sure where Ursula is going to park. It's hard enough navigating a familiar pasture in the dark!

Ursula Hasn’t Lumbered Lately

Ursula hasn’t been feeling well, what with the overheating thing I’ve been mentioning. It’s as if she’s been running a high but intermittent fever. So she’s been hospitalized since the end of the last trip. They diagnosed the problem, and she’s been waiting for a donated organ (something in her cooling system), but she rejected the first two organs. One was too large, the other too small. We’re hoping the next one is just right—maybe I should have used a Goldilocks metaphor instead of medical one.

The bottom line is that she wasn’t available to make the trip to see Dad this weekend. So we took Maximus Decimus—my Nissan, not to be confused with Maximus Decimus Meridius—for a day-trip yesterday. It may have been the first time Maximus has ever seen rain in Central Texas. I know it was the first time he’s seen mud. (More on that later.)

Suna takes a picture of the cars bathing in the rain.
Maximus is the one on the right.

The trip down was uneventful. Chris, Beth, and Bailey were already there. Bailey spent most of the day trying to sleep wherever she was—on the mule, on a lawn chair, on a couch…

We enjoyed chatting and eating lunch at Dairy Queen and watching the rain come and go. The rain was gentle and varied. Still, the farm got 1.1 inches over the course of the day.

Dad wasn’t feeling good when we got there, and he spent most of the day napping. He was feeling better by the time we left.

Dad listens to the conversation going on around him.
He says you can’t learn anything if you’re talking.

On the way out, we stopped to look at some cute calves.

Granted these calves aren’t nearly as cute as the one we saw
splashing in a mud puddle on the ride back from Dairy Queen.

We let the GPS guide us on a road I hadn’t been down before because it said it was shorter than the normal route. It turns out to be caliche and slick as owl snot after the rain. Maximus’s traction control even kicked in a couple of times. It was a lot of fun, even though Maximus is still shedding caliche after three trips through the Wash Tub.