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...