Still Weaning and a Speedy Trip to Nebraska

I'm still playing catch up, but we finally finished weaning on Saturday and I've still got pictures to sort through and share from the previous week. Most days, the boys gather a pasture, drive them to the pens, sort off the calves from the cows, run the calves through the chute to process and vaccinate them, and then run the cows through. They bring them up a few head at a time:

And funnel the calves towards the chute using a series of gates:

Each calf  and cow gets vaccinated

 and the cows and bulls get a dose of Cydectin, which is a pour on wormer for internal and external parasites

And the boys just run down the line, making sure each animal is treated

Then DH runs the chute

And Olan runs the gate, opening it one way or the other in order to separate the heifers from the steers

And then the process starts again as the boys bring up another bunch:

There are 4 sets of pens on the ranch so you never really get a sense of how many cattle DH tends to because they work them a few pastures at a time and they're never together in one place. We also raise both beef and Corriente cattle and those are kept separate, but at any given time there are between 1500-2000 hd of cattle.

We've got  a good crew and they put in a good day's work

On Friday, the 20th we packed up, gathered my FIL and headed north to Nebraska for a funeral. DH's cousin, Dave, passed away after battling cancer for 20 months. DH has a lot of cousins...over 35, but he was closest to Dave. They shared a love for ranching and horses and family. We drove up on Friday because we wouldn't miss a chance to honor Dave and let his sweet wife know how much we treasure them both. DH has a HUGE family and he grew up in a tiny town in Nebraska and over 700 folks gathered at the local school gym because it was the only building in town large enough to accommodate a crowd that size. It was so good to catch up with everyone - I adore DH's family - but I sure wish we had been there for a different reason.

We drove back on Sunday. 1538 miles. I wish I had taken a recorder to document the stories that my FIL and DH shared across the miles:

I could have written a book about the Sandhills of Nebraska as I sat in the back so they could visit and stitched the miles away:

With the exception of about 30 minutes one day, it's been almost 2 months since I've sewn a stitch or even darkened the doorway of my sewing room so it was rather nice to have uninterrupted time to work on my never-ending English Paper Piecing project.

You would have thought I would have more done, but our trip was almost entirely composed of little country back roads and it was a challenge to thread my needle and piece the little stars together. And the answer to your question is yes...these are for two different quilts. I haven't made a lot of progress, but here's where they were before our trip: