Checking on the Cows

Tricia, Benjamin and I took a ride out to Oberlin, LA on a beautiful afternoon to check on the cows that we recently purchased.  It is about a 30 minute drive north from our home.  We drove the pickup truck and Benjamin brought the Marlin lever-action .22 and had a good time shooting at things in the pond.  We had a nice visit.  It is always nice to have passengers with you for the conversation, but also for the passenger to be the "gate-opener."

If you have a gate-opener, you can stay in your seat and just drive on through, while your gate opener closes the gate up behind you.  Who needs an automatic gate opener when you have your wife with you?

The cows are real tame.  They come walking right up when you drive in.  I should have had some sweet feed or some range cubes to feed them, but we weren't prepared as we decided on the spur of the moment to go check on them.  The cows were all around one of the ancient live oak trees on the farm.  This tree is right in front of where the old Sonnier homeplace was.  The huge limbs of the tree are covered with Resurrection fern that greens up after rains and then turns brown and looks dead in dry weather.  Many times as a kid I climbed up into the crown of this tree and surveyed the countryside.  Beautiful old tree.  If it could talk, it would have many stories to tell.  There is a big hole on the east side of the tree that once was home to a den of foxes.

I don't remember the old Sonnier homeplace that was here.  I'm sure it was torn down before I was born.  I do remember attending family reunions around this tree and watching my grandfather and his brothers barbecuing while all the ladies set up tables with potato salad, baked beans, and cakes and pies.  Us kids ran around with the cousins playing while the food was being prepared.

Directly west of this photo is an old pecan orchard that my great grandfather planted.  They haven't produced pecans in a few years and are getting really old.  They provided shade for the cows (and for us) in many hot summers.  Standing in that pecan orchard brought back memories.  Even though it is winter and there are no leaves in the pecan trees, if I listened real hard, in my imagination, I could hear the wind blowing through the green leaves on a hot summer's day.  I could hear the "cawing" of the crows as they congregated on a fall day to eat pecans, to our consternation.  Directly west of the pecan orchard was a stand of bamboo against the gully that was planted to give the cows a wind break on cold winter's days.  The bamboo created a 'jungle-like' environment that, as kids, we'd run through and pretend we were in Viet Nam.  The cane break also gave us many cane poles that later became spears, or fishing poles, or walking sticks.  I can distinctly remember my grandpa cutting some tall cane poles from the bamboo stand, tying a newspaper to the end of the pole, setting it on fire and using it to reach high into the trees to burn the bag worm webs that filled the pecan trees.

The farm is truly a beautiful place with beautiful memories...

Work Day in the Pecan Orchard

This past weekend we drove over to our family farm in Oberlin, Louisiana.  It is about 30 miles from our home.  The weather was overcast and not too hot yet, so it was a good day to clean up some big branches that had fallen in our pecan orchard.  The orchard was planted by my great-great grandfather and still produces pecans.  The old family homeplace used to be just to the left of the huge live oak in the photo below.

One thing about pecan trees is that they tend to drop lots of branches and big limbs in storms.  My Dad and Mom met us there and they had 3 of my sister's six boys with them.  Unfortunately, I only have one photo of the work we did.  Basically, we used a chainsaw to cut all the limbs that could be used as firewood and stacked in one stack and then made piles of the smaller stuff that we'll burn.  We made 5 or 6 different stacks like this at various locations throughout the orchard.  Later we'll come back with a trailer, pick up all the firewood and push all the smaller stuff to one big pile to have a bonfire.  You have to be careful picking up the pecan branches.  For some reason fire ants love to build their mounds around them.  If you are picking up pecan wood, you can take it to the bank that you are going to get into fire ants.


The work went fast with this crew of laborers

Note the large, old live oak tree in the background of the picture above.  No telling how old it is.  It is really amazing how big that tree is.  There was a family of foxes that lived in a hole near the base of that tree at one time.  It is a great tree for climbing in.  As a boy I would climb way up into it and Russ was doing the same on Saturday.


Tree hugger

This large live oak has its branches absolutely covered in resurrection fern.  It is like carpeting on the tree.  It doesn't harm the tree at all, but attaches to the bark and gets its nutrients from the air and water around it.  Here is a closer look at the resurrection fern:  

Resurrection fern

The reason it is called resurrection fern is because when it gets dry, the fern leaves will curl up and turn brown and appear to be dead.The fern can survive drought like nothing I've ever seen.  All it takes is a little rainfall and... poof!... it will green back up again as lush as a springtime meadow.  This photo I took shows some of the fronds starting to appear dry or dead, but the plant bounces back (resurrects) with only a little rainfall.


Drought proof fern

Russ made his way higher and higher into the old oak tree.   It's hard to show scale of how big this tree is or how high up Russ is with a picture.  The limbs droop down to almost ground level and the cows congregate around the limbs and scratch themselves.  Some of the limbs are worn smooth by their scratching.

Once the work was done, we walked out in the pasture and visited a baby calf that was born the day before.  The little heifer is not afraid of humans yet and let us pet her.
 

Baby calf

She perked her head up as her momma arrived.  Momma cows leave their babies and go eat grass, but they keep an eye out and if someone or something finds their baby, they come to check things out.


Here comes momma

The little calf got up on wobbly legs and made her way over to tell her mother that we didn't mean any harm. 

While we were finishing up the work, Benjamin and his 3 cousins jumped down in the gully and began making a dam with mud and sticks, throwing mud at each other and just generally being country boys.  Funny thing is, I can remember swimming in the gully at this exact spot years ago.  Around here when we get a good rain, folks call them "gully washers" because the water rises and washes all the branches, trash, etc. downstream and washes the banks clean.  The cows have a water trough to drink from, but they also climb down the banks of the gully to drink as well.

Boys will be boys

It's always good to get the cousins together.  They have a good time together and always need a good bath and scrubbing afterwards. 

Outlaws in the gully

Yep, they had a good time and we got a lot done in the orchard which will make the bush-hogging (mowing) much easier.


Swimsuits?  Who needs 'em!