It’s challenging to keep with a blog. It takes time, reflection, and even some soul-searching and I don’t always feel up for the task, but here we are now. We decided we would quit dwelling on our travels and start talking about the things that this blog was initially intended for. I thought we could start by describing our general tasks and a few of our favorite adventures so far.

Day 1: Get familiar with the basics and learn to drive stick (Oh no). Days 2 and 3: Pull out barb-wire fencing (It’s fine). Day 4: Tear out the fence posts (Scary). Day 5: Put up a new fence (Fun!). Day 6: Learn how to drive a bunch of machines (My head hurts). Day 7: Install a floating fence (Face half a dozen phobias and become familiar with ticks). Day 8: Relocate 30 cows (Now, that’s what I call Sabbath).

Those of you that have grown up in South Dakota or are familiar with farming/ranching life may look at the list above and think, “Yeah, sounds about right.” If you’re like us- who thought (until very recently) that farming just meant throwing seeds and then waiting for stuff to grow- it would have never made sense for you to learn anything on that list, besides maybe driving stick. Needless to say, it’s been eventful, and we have learned a ton! I’m going to keep this blog to a manageable length somehow.

Our first job was to learn the daily tasks- or “baby chores” as Dean likes to call them. Every morning that we work, we start by bottle-feeding a calf (yes, it’s that cute), feeding horses, bulls, heifers, more bulls, more horses, and barn cats.

You might think that walking beside two-thousand pound bulls or behind horses would be among the most frightening chores, but it’s actually feeding the barn cats that takes the cake. Dean, menacingly, placed the cat food tray up in the rafters, so Jessie or I have to stick our heads- one of the more important body parts- through the opening in the rafters to pour their food into the tray. Every time we are greeted by a chorus of vocally ungrateful felines. The kittens have learned the ways of their elders in a matter of weeks. Observe.

Before we came here, we pictured that the farm and all the pastures were part of one giant square piece of land. If you’re going to check on the cows, go drive to that end of the square, and they’ll be in the corral. If you’re going to check the corn, go to the other end of the square and check the corn. If you want to hunt pheasants, go somewhere in between, try your best, and aim low. Instead, the bulls are in one pasture a half-mile away, the heifers in another two miles away, some horses in another a mile away, some more cows in another seven miles away, and some other bulls and steers are in a corral right next to the house, and one bull with bow-legs named Ignats can wander wherever- he won’t get very far.

Because several pastures are a half-mile or more away, we have to drive to them… with a manual vehicle. Jessie and I have never driven manual. We have never even been introduced to the concept. By the end of day one, I had to drive 8 miles home on my own. The most terrifying part was trying to cross the main intersection- the only possibility of cross-traffic. I eased up to the intersection. A semi-truck was a half-mile down the road, going 25 mph- just enough time for me to cross. I took my foot off the clutch, pressed the gas, the truck jumped two or three times and then petered across, just before the semi arrived, or so it felt. I let out a long sigh, wondering how the upcoming crossings would go for us.

By day two, we were de-fencing 583 feet of fence. Pulling staples out of wood posts is fine- uneventful and fairly self-explanatory- so I’ll skip that. Here’s a question for you: How do you pull up 7-foot long wood posts that are 2 to 3 feet deep? You could try to pull them out by hand, but you won’t. You could dig them up, but that would take forever. How about wrapping a chain around a post and then holding on to the end of the chain while a tractor pulls upward on it? That’s what we did. It’s scary! All that force, and who knows what could happen to the chain or the post at any moment.

The best part of fencing is installing new posts. We told you in the first blog that we would be getting our PhD (Post-hole Digging), but we actually gout PhP (Post-hole Pounding). Imagine a hammer hitting a nail, and then multiply the size by 100. The “hammer” is gas-powered and controlled with four levers. The “nail” is wood and going three feet into the ground. It’s an excellent sight of power and exciting task of precision. I got to pound in about 45 wood posts while Jessie pulled the pounder with an old manual tractor made in India.

One afternoon the bugs were so bad and the ground so mucky that Dean and I couldn’t go fix some fencing, so Dean decided to teach me how to drive a big tractor and pull a horse trailer. Moving a trailer and tractor wouldn’t be too difficult if they were automatic and there weren’t three maniac Labradors running, barking, investigating inches ahead of the front tires everywhere we went. The most challenging thing I have done so far is park the horse trailer by backing it up. As I said, the truck was a stick shift, so trying to figure out angles with the trailer while simultaneously trying to think through the operations of a manual truck was quite the mental task. I was amped and exhausted when the trailer was finally in its correct position. Dean told me to share with Anna how easy it was to park the trailer because she just “loves” that task. She scoffed when I told her it only took me two tries and scolded me later when she found out it was more like seven tries.

That’s all I will share for now. I hope to dig deeper into farming and Clark and cultural differences and non-work experiences in later blogs.

There is a marginal chance of severe thunderstorms tonight, including golf ball sized hail and 60 mph winds. The most likely scenario is another drenching rainfall with intermittent lightning. That’s my forecast anyway. Until next time!