January 1, 2011
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Welcome, 1-1-11
Did you know it has been 100 years since anyone said that?
I have a new plan for blogging this year, at least to start out. I’m going to attempt to keep a daily journal of our lives on the farm. It may bore you (and me) but I want to give it a try. So, with no further ado, here goes:
January 1 dawned clear and cold in the Ozarks, after a New Year’s Eve that was marred by tornadoes and storms in our area. Thankfully, we escaped and didn’t even have high winds. I feel sorry for those who are starting this new year with damage and devastation and loss. We’ve had that sort of loss twice before, and it is not something you can recover from….or clean up…quickly.
Since it is Saturday and since it is New Year’s Day, the men only did the basic chores this morning. Cattle are being fed at all the silos now, and big round bales of hay are also delivered to several places. Stan, Theron, Phillip, Lee, Keith and Derek got started at daylight, just after 7:00 a.m. and so were finished by 11, in time to spend the first day of the year with their families.
I spent the morning taking down and putting away Christmas decorations. When he came in, Stan helped me get our dry and shedding cedar tree out of the stand and into the back of my truck; it will go into our lake to become a place for fish to shelter, feed and nest.
After a lunch of leftovers, Stan, my farmboy, is now watching football and napping and reading in his recliner for a while before we go out for an afternoon drive. I’m going to suggest we stretch our drive into a visit to the Oldfield Opry tonight. It’s a homegrown country/bluegrass music show about an hour from here. We know the banjo player and one of the two bass players and always enjoy the show. Sometimes, during this off-season, some of the musicians from Branson show up to jam with the regulars, and one of the comedians from the Baldknobbers’ show adds his humor in the winter months. It has been too long since we’ve been to Oldfield! A nice, scenic drive, a little music and comedy–a great way to start the new year!
Comments (4)
Sounds like a good idea for the year as well as a perfect plan for the evening.
Do you archive your posts? I do but have not burnt any to cd. It would make a nice journal for the future. I was wondering how near you were to the tornado damage. The news showed terrible loss. We had real strong winds last night but nothing like a tornado or any damge.. We’re on the IA/MO border.
I find it interesting to read your blogs and to catch up on what is going on with you that you want to share. Sometimes just peeking into someone else’s life proves that we all have a similar lives or not right? We raised cattle for several years and now have a son doing it. He found his bull dead recently, only a 3 year old and a good bull. He also lost several calves etc etc…I am sure you know how that goes. Anytime we’d find a dead calf my husband always saw it as”the biggest, best and nicest one”. He would walk for hours over 400 acres nearly everyday checking cattle and most were so tame they’d walk up to him to be petted and he had names for many of them. He’d search for hours to find a newborn or a missing calf. The farm had several ditches and the calves would fall into one and not be able to get back to Mom. I doubt if I can tell of anything you folks have not experienced. It is a good life but you certainly earn every nickle.
Happy NewYear!
Love your posts, Janet. I will enjoy living along side you and yours. We had a houseful of friends for lunch and part of the afternoon. Now Wil is out checking cattle and fences. We seem to have many ghost cattle or ghost fences lately. The calves especially seem to come and go at will without benefit of using the gates.
That’s the way I’ve been journaling all this time too. I type it onto “Notebook”, then copy and paste it onto a floppy disc, then enter it onto Xanga. Thus, I’ve killed two birds with one stone. In fact, yesterday, I copied them from a floppy, which holds less than a CD, and put them on a CD. My computer lady told me, that occasionally a floppy will go bad, and I surely didn’t want to lose any of it. Some day, I intend to print them out in book form. I also, at the beginning, am writing what I can remember about my early childhood, and what I can remember my parents telling me about themselves, and the ancestors before them. I don’t know a whole lot about my grandparents’ early life, and I think that’s what makes genealogy interesting. Between that, and the xanga entries, I intend to copy the notes I’ve made on about 30 years of calendars I’ve kept as well. Should make interesting reading for my descendants.
One warning though, if you type it on “Word”, then copy and paste it onto Xanga, sometimes, for reasons I don’t know, it puts a bunch of those jibberish things on it. Can’t copy and paste it off “Word”, onto Xanga.