So What’s Hal Up To Now?

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It’s June, so he’s up to his neck in fescue – that’s what!

Once again, the season for hay production is upon us.  As you can see from the photograph above, the fescue/clover fields are ready for baling.  The grass is tall and rich with nutrients, and weeds haven’t had much of a chance to develop within the fields. 

This part of the Ozarks has seen abundant rain this Spring (at least 10″ ABOVE average), and the temperature has remained relatively mild.  It has been ideal conditions for the tall fescue that dominates our region.

For the past several years I have taken pains to get several additional pastures groomed and readied for hay production, in addition to our regular hay fields.  They now appear to be ready for harvest.

We have a couple of reliable and ambitious neighbors who are motivated to do the cutting and baling.  The price of all cattle feed matter (hays, grains, protein supplements, etc.) has risen dramatically in recent months, so they would like to utilize as much of our grass as possible.

Thus, my hopes are high that all of these factors will combine to make this year a banner year for hay production on this property.

UNLESS ……..

The skies that looked like this at 12:40 PM

And then look like this at 1:15 PM

Turn into a downpour like this!  Then all bets are off…

The Cattle Guard

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It’s the time of the season for our neighbor to start baling our hay.  As you can see, the fields are lush and green this time of year.  And very tempting for the cattle grazing in adjacent pastures.  You may recall a post entitled Invasion of the Corn Snatchers from last year, wherein I recounted the destruction of one of our wildlife feeders by a marauding herd of hungry cattle that breached our fencing.

When we find neighboring cattle on our land, it can usually be traced to a failure of the barbed wire fencing which surrounds the property.  The black line on the topographic map above depicts 2.25 miles of barbed wire fencing that separates our property from the land of neighbors who run cattle.  Fallen trees or old, brittle fence wire usually account for the intrusions.

Yesterday, we had a different problem.  A few cattle were roaming along our entry road, but there were no breaks in the fencing.  How were they getting in?

This photo shows the (not so) Grand Entrance to our property.  It is a county road, protected by a pipe cattle guard.  The red arrow that I have added to the photo points to the corner of the cattle guard that neighboring cattle were jumping over in order to reach our tempting hay fields.  There clearly needed to be an obstruction added to this side of the cattle guard, to prevent the cattle from hopping the guard with impunity.

Additionally, when I inspected the guard itself, I noticed that years of accumulated leaves and debris clogged the underside of the guard.  The cattle guard is supposed to present itself as a deep, dark, mysterious place to the cattle that make an approach.  The buildup of debris under the guard spoils the effect, and the cattle are no longer spooked by the device.  It needed cleaning, pronto!

With shovels and rakes, and after much sweat and toil on the part of Retta and myself,  the job of clearing out the underside of the cattle guard was finally completed.  Now, to address the problem of insufficient side barriers.  What could we use to block the side of the cattle guard?

Here is a photograph taken 7 years ago in our paddock area, back in the time when we still had a cattle squeeze chute installed.  Notice at the front of the chute there is a red head gate in place.  The head gate is used to hold the head of the cow still, thus immobilizing the animal (usually for veterinary work).  When we removed the squeeze chute from the paddock, we retained the old head gate, just in case we needed it for something in the future (you just never know when a cattle head gate will come in handy)!

Well, the head gate finally came in handy!  By propping it up against the tree, we have eliminated the easy path that the neighboring cattle had used to hop across the cattle guard.  Notice, also, how the underside of the guard is empty and clean – and once again spooky to the cattle.

It isn’t a pretty solution, but it does have a rustic, yard-art type of feel to it, especially knowing that it was once a necessary piece of equipment used here at the ranch.

Problems Plague Previously Prolific Poster!

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Help! I need your input to try and debug a misbehaving blog.  Here is the problem.  When I surf on over to my blog URL, I should see a web page that looks like the screen capture seen here –

Unfortunately, that is not what is showing up on my screen.   Here is the page that I usually see these days-

The page does not appear to recognize any formating - the header does not line up correctly, the side-bar has been pushed down to the bottom of the page, the background has disappeared, and the photographs have failed to load.

If I hit the refresh button on my browser, after a few iterations I might get some of the pictures to load, but the header remains missing-in-action, as seen above.

Sometimes, several of the photographs will load correctly, but others will not, as seen in the screen capture above.

And at yet other times, I see a partial header, with no photographs loading, while some of the page formating remains in tact.

I need to try and isolate the problem, but since I have no other computer access beyond my home network, I cannot see what my blog looks like to other readers.   Here is where I need your help.  If you have stumbled across this page by any chance, please leave a comment telling me if the page is formated correctly for you, or whether it is messed up on your screen.

This problem occurs on my computer using either Internet Explorer or Firefox, so I don’t think it is a browser problem.

I am using the standard default Wordpress Kubrick theme, using only a few of the standard sidebar widgets, with no modifications, so I doubt that the Wordpress theme is the culprit.  Also, with enough browser refreshes, the page will eventually load correctly, so this seem to indicate that the problem lies outside the theme templates.

My trouble shooting instincts are telling me that this is somehow related to my web host, and that I will have to deal with their tech resources to solve the problem, but before I embark on that path, I want to try and eliminate the possibility that my satellite Internet provider is not somehow to blame (you would be surprised how many things satellite Internet service screws up)!

PS – It occurs to me that if you are experiencing the same problems with this web page as I am, than the screen captures above might not show up – ain’t technology fun? ;)