Tompkins Corner Chronicles

 Over the last couple months since moving back to the ranch my wife, parents and I have been getting into the "All Creatures, Great and Small" series based on the Jim Harriot short stories with it's name sake.  We've really enjoy it, though we only get an episode watched every couple weeks or so, but that's okay.  It has great story telling and I've found myself getting invested in the future of the characters.  Very wholesome show.  In the same, though much inferior, vein I wanted to tell a handful of animal stories over the last month or so.   Our dog, Baron continues to be my eager sidekick.  He is really living his best life as a ranch dog.  No more narrow, two lot boundaries like he had in town.  The cats and cows to chase as a big plus.  But by far, to the point of shaking with excitement, his favorite is riding along in the pickup or 4-wheeler.   Here he is checking cows with me: And here he is lounging on the 4-whe...

Hayfield season is solidly underway.  As a kid this season was often 10-12 hour days and involving 4-6 people when stacking hay.  Now, 20 years later two guys can roughly keep pace with the larger equipment and moving from stacking hay to baling hay.  We had a rough start, my first day running the baler I managed to make every mistake I think one could make.   Overwrapped a bale: Under-wrapped a haybale: And did whatever happened here: and this is a belt overlapped on itself and jammed when the operator closes the gate incorrectly: After the first day things went much better, well mostly, except for the time I started a tractor on fire.  It was a one of those particular hot days around 95 degrees and I was running the baler a little too hard. In my defense I was trying to avoid plugging up, as I had been doing a lot of that.  But with the combination of a very hot day, an old tractor, and some hay dust caked onto the engine along with some leaky oil, I...