Stay in Missouri

Stay in Missouri

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This is the valley with the hill that Uncle Henry was mowing when the tractor rolled over on him and killed him ten years ago. The stand of trees to the left is the hill that Uncle Felix had suggested that Henry give up on. However, Uncle Henry retired from the ministry in order to raise cattle and seemed to take great satisfaction from driving back the brush and making more grazing land. After ten years without mowing, it has gotten pretty overgrown. It is hard to see here, but it gets really steep in the corner, over 45 degrees. However, I can understand the desire to always get just a few more weeds.
On the wall inside the barn is the red box which powers the electric fences. It generates the shock for all the 'hot wires' that Martin has put out. He just buries insulated cables under the road. On the table in this picture is a yellow cattle prod or hot stick. The hot stick is powered by four batteries so can't generate much of a shock, though the cattle seem to react to it almost as much as they do to the shock from the fence.
I myself have been shocked by the fence on several occasions and can say that it is about as bad as phone lines in the rain (when I was repairing lines during a strike at Verizon) and not near as bad as the 120 volt AC bites that I have gotten on a few occasions. Here is one of the herds moving into a new pasture. In the foreground is a hot wire (not really visible) and a white fiber glass post (left) and steel fence post (right). In the distance you can see the division between the pasture the cattle previously grazed and their new pasture as it is not as green. There is a hot wire along the division.
One of our main chores now that the grass is growing pretty well is to move the water tanks. Here is a tank that is being drained. Martin had gone over the hot wire to close the water valve (red spigot on a steel pipe) and disconnect the hose. Here he is stepping over the hot wire. The hose is connected to a floater valve inside the tank which opens whenever the water level is more than about six inches below the top of the tank. The tanks hold about 300 gallons and we put them in an area enclosed in hot wire which adjoins three or four pastures (so each pasture will have a water source).
Once the water tank is empty we put the hose and floater valve into the tank and load it onto the back of the truck. Then we are off to the next pasture where the cattle need water. The floater valves rely on a rubber bladder to stop the flow (sort of leveraging effect) and sometimes the pin hole to drain the bladder gets blocked with pond scum or such. So another chore is to watch when the pump at the pond is running too often (can be checked from the house) and then check all the tanks to see which floater valve is letting the water overflow.
Here is the newest of Martin's five tractors (three had been Felix's and two had been Henry's). It is the newsest (circa 1984) and largest. They are all Fords though the front end loader attachment on this tractor is by Westdorf and obscures the Ford logo. Martin takes the front end loader bucket off, puts on a fork attachment and uses this tractor (along with the other larger diesel tractor) to stack and load bails of hay on his hay trailer and such. I also used this tractor to pull out the sickle mower tractor when I got it stuck in a very wet ditch (didn't look too bad, but the mud sure was deep).
At some point Martin will probably sell this tractor. It has never been out of the barn while I was visiting. We looked into getting it started when the generator stopped working on the sickle mower tractor, but the battery had died (wouldn't hold a charge) in the last couple of years in the barn and so it waits until Martin gets motivated to actually sell it.
Martin and Bev have three house cats. This is Fat Cat stretching out on the sofa. He looked so comfortable I couldn't resist getting a picture. Their house cats are ex-barn cats and still eat any mice they catch. They also roam freely around the f arm with special cat doors. Their food is left in the basement. There are also two barn cats who mostly feed themselves with mice. My question was how to keep the barn cats from becoming basement and then house cats (since they have moved from the trai ler). Apparently it won't be a problem as the house cats have been keeping the barn cats at a distance in cat fights and such.
I was really enjoying mowing (very satisfying to take out whole swaths of weeds in one pass), but on the morning of May 4, the sickle mower mounting came loose (roll pin wore out). We fixed that with a pin and codder pin instead of a roll pin. Howev er, then the starter failed again in the same way as before. I decided it was time for me to move on (fate telling me I had mowed enough). So on May 5, I left in the morning. Before I left, Martin was enjoying the peaceful morning on his lawn (shown he re).
It was such a lovely view. The trees are just budding and the grass is much greener than when I arrived. Here is the view from the front lawn at sunrise just before I was to leave. I also made up a short video so that you can hear all the birds singing (the video part is pretty dull as nothing is moving). There might be a better way to just get the audio, but I didn't have time to dig out the manual to my camera. You also really need stereo and better audio to f ully appreciate the sounds, but this is all I had.
As I was leaving Martin's farm, I passed an old house that is on his land. He had mentioned that it was in the style of a traditional settler's house with just two rooms. Normally there would be a front door and window and back door and back window in each room making them identical for all practical purposes. This one only has a front door, back door, and back window in just one room. Also, the roof is much more current (galvanized steel roof). Oh well.