Tompkins Corner Chronicles

 June 10th my father and I were trying to get in the final day of fixing fences prior to cows going to summer pasture completed.  We gathered fencing supplies and loaded up the Ol' Blue pickup, a 1979 Ford that my dad purchased new back in '79 and is still going.  As we took off and turned west, cresting the cemetery hill we could see a broad pillar of smoke billowing ahead of us. We decided to detour and head that to check it out.  Maybe someone was simply doing a trash burn or something.  But as we got closer it always seemed to be the next mile off and was growing in size. We reached a mile north of our own pasture called the West Pasture. We got in line behind a few other trucks we see we joined a gathering of ranchers who had the same idea to check it out.  We got out and chatted with a few; one stated he called it in already to the fire department, but they were having trouble getting out to it.  My dad and I continued on and parked in front of o...

 There's an old children's story called "Ferdinand the Bull".  It's about a bull who refused to fight, and instead went out by a tree and smelled the flowers while the other bulls were out playing and fighting.  He didn't care for fighting like the others and instead just preferred to sit alone and enjoy the flowers. One day men came out to select the meanest, toughest bull to challenge the great matador at the big fight.  Upon inspections Ferdinand sat upon a bee and he charged and spun and ran ferociously.  The inspectors were amazed and thought this one to be the meanest toughest bull there is.  Anyway you may need to check out the whole story.    Here I will tell a story of a bull I have now begun calling Ferdinand. One day we were rounding up the bulls to be checked by the vet for proper vitality. All the bulls were together but one. One bull was off by himself under the trees. I tried to round him up but he began running from tree to tree tr...