Nebraska Bound

Not us, just our cattle.

The calves we weaned 45 days ago were ready for the trip to the feedlot.  

Once again, Joe had everything lined up to work like clockwork.  

But there was still a lot of pushing, tugging and shoving to get 77 head loaded on 4 trailers  for the short trip to the farm across the river where they have cattle scales and a loading area large enough for a tractor trailer.  

At the neighbor's barn, they were sorted in to groups of 10ish, 

                                         

run onto the scales, 

and weighed.  

The tractor trailer got backed in 

and bedded for the cattle. 

52,515 pound were loaded into 7 different compartments for the 22 hour trip. 

I hope they all had their mooving buddy. 

This was the list the trucker gave us of the number in each group for each compartment. 

If you look closely, you can see the trucker straddled over the entrance.  He was making sure the cattle kept going to the right spot and then he could jump down and close off whatever compartment they just filled.  

 Now we just need them to put up a cattle cam in the feedlot so Joe can keep up with them for the next 8 months.

As a bonus, the fog lifted and I was able to get a picture of our house from a spot I don't get to see too often.  

There it is, those two white dots.  

Evolution Of The Gallery Wall

A month ago I asked chatGPT to recommend a design update for this wall in my living room. 

Because I am using the free version, I am limited to how many pictures I can download and questions I can ask in a 24 hour period.  There was a lot to work through so it took some time.  Plus, every time I asked for it to mock up an image, it would change a major unchangeable item. 

These were the pictures I started with. 

I spent a lot of time working on different layouts. 

I streamlined the room and started with a blank slate on the wall. 

After asking real life people, I changed the layout again. 

There was lots of measuring and contemplating.  And maybe a few extra holes in the wall. 

But I finally finished it. I asked chatGPT to evaluate it. 

It wants me to raise it up 4 more inches (even though it recommended earlier to start it 6-8 inches lower),remove the horse brasses (lower right) and somehow tighten it up even more.

Joe said he liked it. I will take his opinion over chatGPT any day.   Now I get to look for an interesting mid century bench to replace the chest. 

Calm Before The Storm

Snowmageddon 2026 is being predicted for this weekend. 

As you can tell from the map, we don’t know a whole lot yet.  

But we could use a little moisture. The dry weather has been great for Joe to be able to get around the farm with the tractor feeding. But it hasn’t been so good to keep the water troughs full.   This one is in the horse field. The 10 cows from the cattle drive earlier are now here. They will have to be moved tomorrow so hopefully the trough will fill up some before the arctic blast freezes everything solid. 

On my way down the driveway going to work this morning I had to stop and take a picture of the beautiful sunrise. It looks like the calm before the storm  

I also have an update on my shades. I think they look nice from the outside.  But I needed them last month when we had a crew putting a new roof on the house. 

I will have to brag on the double sided tape I got to attach the fabric to the metal rod.   It actually came from Dollar General (I had a $3 off $15 that was good all month not just on Saturday). There were rave reviews. So far it is working great.   I would highly recommend it if you need strong double sided tape. 

 

DIY Roller Shades

The last time I pulled down the cheap vinyl roller blinds in my bedroom, they smelled so bad I had to leave the room.  It is hard to tell what sort of toxic fumes they were emitting.  I had a thought about ordering some custom shades but that thought disappeared when I saw the price.

  

Let’s see if this could be a successful DIY.  I had a piece of fabric that was large enough but I didn’t like how bold the pattern was.  Solution, use the back side.  I took the existing shade and threw away the vinyl but kept the rod.  There was a lot of measuring and ironing.  I used stitch witchery to bind the edges.

I also changed the shades from inside mount to outside mount.  Because I had wooden valances that I didn’t want to take down, it required a lot of tools to finally attach the hardware. 

Tada!  With the sun coming through you still see the pattern but it is very muted. 

I need to check from the outside tomorrow and see what it looks like from that direction.  I am not quite finished. I need to get some doubled sided tape to attach the fabric to the pole.  I just used scotch tape to test it out.   And I need to get something to use as the bottom bar.  So far, I have just used stuff I already had.  The same thing on Blinds.com for the three I just made, would  have been over $1000.  I am counting this as a DIY success.

 

Happy Birthday, Almost

With lots of love and family we celebrated Sadie's 5th birthday (2 days early).  After a meal at Cracker Barrel, her choice, we reconvened at my house for cake and presents.  

Sadie and Allie have had colds recently and no one wanted her blowing on the cake.  So she got 5 candles on a cupcake. 

She may have gotten more presents than Christmas.  A big hit was the special jewelry from Gigi. 

She did not get bongo drums.  Those are Joe's from Christmas.  

I think Allie knows that she will get to play with everything too.  Plus, her other grandmother brought her a big bag of gifts.  

Mike tried out the "wall walker" trying to get a spider web off of the ceiling for me.  

Linda and Ann helped Sadie was her "rescue" pet, a stuffy wrapped in a net that dissolved in water to reveal what kind of animal.  Then there was a lot of towel drying, blow drying and combing.  

But the most time was taken up pickle hunting.  I hid it really well this year.  

Virginia had set up a family survey and presented the results in a very professional and humorous format. 

Joe won, "who would last the longest without their phone".  Now that he has a new iPhone 16e, we will see if that holds true.  

More blow drying of the stuffy.  

And Matt was the pickle champ.  His persistence paid off and he was rewarded with a cereal box Spiderman watch. 

 

25 Days Of Christmas, Day 20

"When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter, I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter...

And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof, The prancing and pawing of each little hoof."

Not exactly Santa's reindeer, but there was quite the clatter.  Today they started working of the new roof we contracted for 3 months ago.

And they decided to try to turn around a ton truck in the narrowest part of the driveway. 

 

"With a little old driver, so lively and quick," NOT!

 My birdbath is now completely trashed.  

On a happier note, Sadie and Allie came today to spend the night.  They wanted to watch Unicorn Academy first.  But I said, "let's ride a real unicorn."   They decided this was a good idea.  Plus, they had on the proper attire.  

We also decked out Clyde in all the red things I could find in the tack room.  We even tied jingle bells in his mane.  

If you tune up the volume you can hear the bells jingle as Clyde trots.  

Allie still does not want to trot but she does like to walk fast.  

I took over leading her and Sadie played in the sand.  After we finished riding, we make molasses cookies, watched one episode of Unicorn Academy, played witches and princesses, walked to the tiny house, fed the dogs and ate out at CJ's.  Sadie even admitted that she was tired.