Stay in Missouri

Stay in Missouri

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On the tops of most hills in the area there are houses in various states of falling down. These are two views of one house that one of the local hunters can remember visiting when he was boy and his grandparents lived there (he is about 50, so that would have been about 1960). Later they retired to town in Goldsberry where he visited them.
Here is a house on the highway that the owner's are keeping (not burning down as is the common way of disposing of old houses) in case they can sell the lumber in it to someone. The other house is on brush/timber that is being used by hunters. Can you see the Irises which are often the last sign of an old home site?
When people live in the area, they often live in trailers. Here is the trailer that Martin, Bev, and Nate lived in while Felix and Laverne lived in the 'big house' where they now reside after Felix died over a year ago and Laverne moved to town early this year. The other trailer is the one used by their closest neighbors who use it as a hunting vacation place.
Here are a couple of the miscellaneous gates to the pastures. The chains on the gates are usually old tire chain chains where the chains that hit the road wore out but the chains that held them in place where still usable. Of course they each have their own unique latches to keep things interesting.
Here is one of the gates into the barn and chutes. The vet came and we were doing pregnancy checks on about 110 cows to see how far along they were and give shots to late term cows, etc.. Basically it entailed the vet sticking his arm up their butt up to his shoulder. Anyway, one cow really avoided the chute and jumped this gate to avoid the chute when she was the last cow. She put her front legs on the top bar and jumped. It was amazing to watch as this fence is about four and a half feet tall.
Many of the barbed wire gates have iron bars which give you leverage get them tight enough to close. That is a 'trademark' of my Uncle Felix when he was putting in gates. This bar is from an old horse harness. In the next picture behind the pasture gate, you can see the remnants of an old barn that was falling down and so was burned so the cattle didn't get hurt in it. Just the tin roof is left.
I have been spending a lot of time mowing fields with the sickle mower. Martin took these two picture and the videos below of me mowing.
Here are a couple of videos of me mowing through a patch of thorns. The base is too big for the sickle, so the release lets it back. The second video is of me backing up to continue. There is also a picture of the mower attachment when it is raised for traveling down the road and such.	If your browser is not set up to show movies you will get an error dialog box instead of a player and can just press cancel.
Here is a hill in a pasture before I mowed it and two days later after I mowed it. After grazing cattle and such for a bit, the hill looks so much nicer without the thorns and saplings.