Spring Cleaning

Even though it's cold and wet outside right now, we in East Texas are having milder weather than a lot of the country, according to the news reports. In my yard the daffodils are blooming profusely.





As you can see from Tana's pictures, we have two varieties. They are so pretty! I can't take credit for them, because we live on Rowdy's great-aunt's old home place, so she's the one who planted them.




Since it's too wet to work on building the new house, we're working on some improvements to the trailer house. It will eventually be a hospitality bunk house when we have the rodeo arena built.

Here you can see I took the doors off the two cabinets above the fridge and painted the inside wall white. See how dark it is in the cabinet to the left?


It's rather pretty with some crystal in there!

So you can see I'm getting some home improvement work done even if I can't get my house built just yet.

House Update

Dalton and Rowdy are measuring where the house will go.
The old barn will eventually be torn down.

Rowdy and Tana are bolting trusses together.

Here are the trusses laid out approximately where they need to be.

I'm excited about the house, but progress is so slow. We're also working on putting the plywood floor into the remaining bedroom of the trailer house. Then we need to replace some flooring in the travel trailer, which is now Dalton's room. It is placed just a few steps from the back door.

Bulls

Times are getting hard. Gas prices are rising. Have you looked at diesel prices lately? Yikes! We're cutting back on the number of bulls we keep. Feed costs are rising, too. So the less promising young 'uns are headed for the sale barn where they will bring depressing prices. But at least we won't be pouring money into them.

About the middle of March, we'll take a couple of the better ones to a bucking stock sale in Texarkana. The prices there will probably be discouraging, too. They have been the last three years we've gone. It seems the bucking bull business is so popular that a lot of moneyed people have gotten involved, kinda like the race horse business. They've pushed ranchers like us out and made it a name game. If your bull has a name or bloodline, he'll bring top dollar. Doesn't matter if he bucks or not. And I think it's been proven that a fantastic bucking bull does not necessarily produce like progeny. In fact, it's been our experience that the mama cow contributes a LOT to the character of a bull that loves to buck. Anyway, little guys like us can produce great buckers, but unless and until they have a Name, nobody's gonna buy them.

It's a good thing this is satisfying just as a hobby!