Last weekend as I was contemplating what to write about, I was coming up with a blank. The vegetables planted in the tubs were beginning to sprout, but with so much rain the strawberries and watermelons weren’t going to be planted in the ground.The roses are blooming.

The grass in the pastures is growing and the cows are happy to be grazing. What was I going to write about? And then it happened….

Charlie received a call from our neighbor that several of our cows had been out in his pasture, but had gone ‘home.’ I had been outside several times that morning and had not noticed anything odd. But as we walked down the fence line, we saw Lily Cow out of our pasture. Remember that Lily is our visiting cow that jumped into our pasture after a different neighbor had unloaded her into his pasture from a stock trailer. Apparently, she jumped out of our pasture and during the process broke a section of the fence. Charlie grabbed tools to repair the fence and our cows seemed curious about what he was doing. I kept telling the cows that Lily was bad and this wasn’t the place for them to be. The blooming honeysuckle on the fence line was telling them otherwise!

But back to Lily Cow who was grazing outside our fence. She followed me from the neighbor’s pasture, along the fence line, into our backyard (by the garden), along the fence line in the front yard, all the way to the gate at the road going into our front pasture. You should see all of hoof prints all through our property in the muddy grass! Lily made her way to the spot where she had first jumped (and broken) the fence. The three calves had been following Lily around all week and we were afraid that she would teach them how to jump the fence! What an exciting afternoon!

Guess who we discovered out of the fence on Monday morning!! We coaxed her back onto our property to keep her safe until her owner could make arrangements to pick her up. He had already been there on Sunday afternoon and started making plans to pick her up in a couple of weeks. She wouldn’t go in our gate so we closed our gate at the end of the driveway. She was ok with that until our cows went across the creek and she wanted to join them. Lily Cow walked up to the fence at the road and jumped over that fence and headed down the road where our cows were. I walked down the road and she followed me back to our front yard. Thankfully, she was off the road. I went inside to get back to work and Charlie went to take care of his tasks. After about two hours, we walked outside to see our cows coming back across the creek to the pasture beside our house. Guess who was with them! Somehow and somewhere, Lily had jumped back into our pasture. After all of that jumping and walking, she was exhausted and had settled down for a nap! We didn’t see where she came in and couldn’t find any broken fences.  Needless to say, Lily’s owner came over along with a cowboy to take her home. She wasn’t too happy being loaded into the stock trailer and taken home. I must admit that Tuesday morning, I wouldn’t have been surprised to see her in our yard or pasture. However, she is now behind an eight foot tall wildlife fence. We’ll see if that can keep Lily the Jumping Cow at home!

On our horizon – working the cows for shots, treatments, pregnancy checking, and branding (of the new cows) AND weaning the three calves. Charlie and Jason will finish preparing the pens this weekend and everyone in the family is ready to come help with the cows and calves at the Wheeler Lazy J Ranch. Maybe when it dries out, I can finish planting the garden!