normal days

It was already my third day of work again today which means one more day of work and i am off again for two days... :D The work is going like always... nothing special except the little stallion which is pretty full of himself and you never know when he pulls his next stunt !!!

rodeo stock on the way to Edson

Now is the time of the pasture hauls and also rodeo season. This means a trucking business is very busy ! And of course it means for me to grab the chance to see more from the country :) That's what I did yesterday again. This time we went to Edson. Robin picked me up in Winfield town and then headed over to pick up rodeo stock (11 horses and 11 bulls) outside Winfield. We had to wait a bit till the owner showed up he had to look for a horse out in the pasture. I was waiting in the truck and suddenly there is this horse running in the yard. With the horse also came the owner driving in the yard. So, everybody was ready to load. After everybody was on board we hit the road toward Edson. The weather wasn't too bad, a bit grey clouds, a bit rain from time to time and nice temperatures. Like always, we had a good time ;D I enjoyed the drive even I already knew the route. After we dropped off the animals at the rodeo ground we went to town 'cause I needed a new cell phone... my old one died ! Around an hour later we jumped back in the truck and headed in the direction of Entwistle where we enjoyed a nice supper. We both were tired and so decided to go home. I had to go back to the barn in the evening anyway.

deworming day

Today, was quite the grey cloudy day, it was also spitting a bit from time to time. There was even the sun shining a tiny little bit on some point of the day. After a lazy morning with chatting and figure out what to do today, we went out in the pasture to catch the members of the big herd. These guys needed to be dewormed. Some of the horses were pretty good and we could catch them pretty fast, others needed a bit more talking them into the idea of getting caught. The one youngster had an argument with Rob about beeing handled. And soon the horses around them had little fits too. I was standing beside the truck where one of the youngster was tied up and watched Duke rearing. This was quiet an impressive picture 'cause Duke is a draft horse, a Percheron (?) I guess. He was standing pretty good balanced on his hindlegs... Wow !! Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera with me :( and he was tied to the jail ! We dewormed almost everyone except a couple which thought they play 'hard to catch'. It was fun but it also took a lot of energy out of me. I was just tired after we were done. Rob had to buy staples in town and so we took off to Breton. I took the chance to buy groceries.

off after 5 days of work

After 5 days of work (I will get the one day off in June) I am finally off again. It just sucks all the energy out of you when you shovel shit for that amount of time !!! I was just exhausted ! (I wonder how I feel when I will work 8 (!) days in a row in July). And it didn't help at all that I didn't sleep good the night before. So I am back in Winfield to charge my batteries. Last night I just slept like a rock, i was out like a light and this morning up at 8 am. Yesterday evening, Rob and I went for a few little job outside. Moving horses to other pens, putting a temporary fence up on the one pen, chasing two horses which out of a pasture where they didn't belong and went for a quad ride in the bush to have a look where the two covered bridges will be. It was pretty muddy after all the rain we had. My pants and coat was just a mess.... But the rain was needed badly !! Oh well, mud is part of spring here I would say.

Mavis

I have a little helper, Mavis the black and white cat. When I first started at Double W she was shy and I couldn't catch or pet her at all. I can't remember what happend but suddenly she came to me and I could pet her and she followed me everywhere. And since she is on a diet, I usually feed her twice a day. So, every morning when I come to the barn to have my breakfast Mavis waits for me, sometimes outside the barn (spring) or inside. Usually, I get shit from her... maybe to hurry up and feed her ?? I am not quite sure ! I have my breakfast first and around 7am Mavis get hers too. I try to feed her not too early in the morning otherwise she will be hungry in the afternoon again instead of the evening. Mavis usually helps me feeding hay to the horses in the morning and afternoon. She can sleep on a chair but as soon as I take the wheelbarrow to fill it up with hay bales, Mavis is on her way to the spot where the bales are. As soon as Missy is on the bales and ready to go, we take off for our feeding tour. Sometimes I get shit from her here too... Mavis is a real queen, I call her the 'Queen of the barn' :D Sometimes, she follows me even to the house. Once she was waiting for me, had a nap on a chair and when I went to the barn for night check again she followed me all the way back to the barn. My little cutie helper.. ;D

a full day

Saturday, my day off and yeah, I am pretty busy already again. In the morning we took off to Drayton Valley to drop off a tractor tire to fix it and in the meantime we went grocery shopping. We were all done with shopping but the tire wasn`t fixed yet so we headed over to the chinese restaurant for lunch. It was good like always... then finally the tire was fixed and we could hit the road again to reach our next stop, the auction place. We checked out the stuff which was for sale. Nice trucks, play grounds, power posts, boats, tractor, you name it... everything you want... around 20 min later we jumped in the truck again and took off to our next destination, home. Where Robin and I changed into the big semi truck to go on a horse haul. We had to pick up bucking horses to bring them to the rodeo ground in Thorsby. I was so excited ! And so curious how you can load bucking horses in a trailer... ! Easy ! Open the door and let `em run in... these guys knew what`s going on. They were up in the trailer, in the compartment and arranged themself so they could travel without any problems. I was impressed ! These are not handled horses, almost wild. And they loaded like aces !! We picked up 25 and off we go to Thorsby. The unloading part was way more quiet then the loading part. Open the door and here they come.... WOW !! Now, next stop a cow farm to pick up a load of cows to bring them to their summer pasture. They have a basset hound. He is a real cow dog !! :) This time he was tied up (I met him the first time when we picked up the heifers for the trip to Fairview). I think this dog has sooo much class. Also, no problems with loading, all pro`s :) around 15 min later we reached the pasture, unfortunately full of mosquitos ! I prefered to stay in the truck and have some m&m`s for a snack ;D All unloaded and ready to head home. It was soooo hot in the truck that we needed an ice cream badly ! A detour later we were eating our ice cream sandwich and having a nice chat. Finally, home it' wasn't time to be lazy yet, next project put the fixed tire on the tractor and go fencing in the bush. I was driving the tractor, a loud old thing. I had some problems to drive that thing but after a while it wasn't too bad at all. Robin checked the posts and I followed with tractor and post pounder. It was soooo peaceful, the only noise came from the tractor. I really enjoyed to be in the bush. I just love it !

surprising cattle haul

My day off yesterday started with a cattle haul. My friends picked me up and I was surprised to see both in the truck... Soon, I knew why. A cattle haul was scheduled for 6.30 pm. GREAT ! :) Of course I took the chance to go on a little road trip. It is so nice now, all the green and the tiny leaves everywhere... I love spring ! Especially when you had that much snow for 5 or 6 month. We picked up 24 cows to bring them to the grazing reserve where they will stay for the summer and go back home in fall. It was interesting to see how it works to bring cows to this place. We went home after we dropped them off. As soon as we came home the decision was made to go to a place where they have an auction on Saturday to check things out. The 4 of us jumped in the truck and got going. Are they still open at around 8 pm ? We called there and sure enough they closed at 8pm... :( okay so all the way back home. The rest of the evening we had a good visit.

4 days of work

Another 4 days of work went by pretty fast. And here I am on my day off, this time only one. The other one I will have in June when we go to the mountains. We have to do some sacrifice from time to time and this is it worth ! So, back to work tomorrow this time for 5 days... I will survive that one additional day too. :D It's not that my work is bad or something... i like it and enjoy my time when i can interact with horses. It's always a chance for me to train my skills of body language and it works better every time I use it. Oh I love Chris Irwin's method !

Promo evening in Rocky Mountain house

Sun, May 15 : After a night of sleep like a stone and breakfast it was time to head for the church. I was still a bit tired and not quite awake yet... The service started and I managed not to yawn too much. The band was practicing for the evening. They had a promo evening in Rocky Mountain house in a church. And this was our next destination after the service was over. I packed my stuff 'cause the plan was to drop me off at Double W on the way home. We stopped at a restaurant between Winfield and Rocky Mountain house. It took for ever to get the food ! The cook was cotton-picking slow !!! We were suppost to be in Rocky at 4.15 pm. It was a nice church, anglican/lutherian (?). We brought all the equipment in and the band started to put everything like it should be. While they started their sound check I went shopping food. The service /promo started at 7pm. There were quite a group of people there. That was great ! Robin told them about their camp meeting in July and they sang a few songs. It was good, I was so happy for Robin that it worked out so well for him. I really hope a few people from this evening will show up in July. Of course, i will be there too :) I said i will help with cooking.

Fairview road trip

Time for a road trip to Fairview on Sat. May 14. Our day started early, Robin and I left the farm at 6.30 am and headed toward Thorsby to pick up our first group of heifers. 11 girls. After a not so well organized load process we were on the road again to pick up the second group, this time 16 black girls. This farmer had a better set up to load cattle. A basset hound was there too. He was so excited to meet me, he was jumping up on me and I had to pet him. This guy has class (like Robin would say :D ) I helped to get the girls unstuck again in the shoot. Sometimes, a traffic jam happens when one cow / calf hits the breaks... Everyone went in the trailer well and soon we were on our way again. Our next stop was in Barrhead to have breakfast and put gas in the truck. I really enjoyed the drive it was great so see all the different countryside, bush and then prairie, bush again and prairie. I really liked the pine trees on the hill after Swan hills. It would be great to go for a trail ride over there. Robin told me it would look like that in the mountains where we will go for our holidays in June. Robin and I had a good time, laughing, serious talks, jokes and bugging each other.... After an 8 hour drive we reached the final destination where the girls will live. It was outside of Fairview. We drove the truck right in the pasture where we unloaded the girls. There was already a big gang of heifers in there. As soon as they saw the semi truck they came running up to us. I only thought, you guys are sooooo snoopy !! :D It was time to unload and so we opened the door and the heifers jumped in their new environment. Some joined the foreign group and others took off for a exploring tour in the pasture. it was so funny. After a business talk (Robin and the owner) we hit the road again towards home. It was around 5 pm. Now, we could take it easy and thats what we did. We stopped for ice cream at a gas station. It was still really hot in the semi. Our way home was different then our way up. We did a loop. On an intersection were we had to turn left was a sign saying to the right ' Border Northwest Territories'. I suggested we could go right instead of left... :D Robin said this would be another 10 hour drive... well it was tempting anyway :D I had a blast taking pictures... I was still so excited and not a bit tired. Around 8 pm we reached Whitecourt and decided to have supper here. First, we put gas in the truck again and then we figured out where to eat. An hour later and totally full we climbed in the truck again and hit the road. The sun slowly disappearing and I tried to take a picture of the sunset in the mirror. Not too bad of a shot ;D Soon the darkness came and with that the sleep (well I slept...).The next time i woke up was when we were stopping at the gate at home. I was a bit confused 'cause I thought I only slept for around 10 min... it was for 40 min ! It was 11.30 pm when we finally walked in the house. Both of us were ready for bed.

Happy Mother's day

After I woke up this morning and had my breakfast, it was time to bake the cake for our lunch today. I wanted to bake a 'zebra cake'. So, I got started, the service in the church started at 10.30 am and it was already 8.55 am ! As soon as the cakes were done (I had to do two cakes 'cause there was so much batter :), we went down to the church and the service started. It was good to be in the new almost finished church ! I really enjoyed the service. The lunch afterwards was good, lots of dessert ;D I really love this part :D It was great to visit with all the people who were there, met more people... we all were tired after this good lunch, visiting and sitting in the sun.

Mother's day

4 days of work are already over. It flew by pretty fast. Not much exciting happend... Now, it's time for my days off again. It's Mother's day and the church is done so far that the service will be in there. We cleaned up a bit yesterday evening and members of the band did a little sound check. It sounds awesome, the acoustic is great. I sure hope it's not raining like the weather guys said it should. But I guess we are not that lucky... it looks like it's aready raining a little bit. And my rubber boots are still in the box of the truck ! :( I hope they are not filled with water yet... There is something exciting hanging in the air... a trip to Fairview with a load of heifers (female baby cows) :) It would be great when it would happen on my next days off :D it must be very nice countryside from here to up there. It's a 13/14 hours trip...

varnishing-blast

Monday was my first day off. I went to Winfield again. After a nice quiet night, a good breakfast with waffles we headed down to the church to varnish the walls. There were the 5 of us with brushes and one person did more work with wood. I volunteered too go on the stage and varnish the ceiling.... Well, it was a bit creepy the first few minutes but then I got used to the height again. Erin came up too and we had a blast varnishing the ceiling. The fumes from the varnish made us having a good time. :) We were just laughing and giggling ;D I didnt know that varnishing can be such a blast :D Then after a while we could hear the sound of a vehicle coming down the road... it was Marc. He repaired the motor and had the 42 year old Volkswagen running again. Poor thing looked a bit neglected. Marc invited me for a drive around the property. It was so funny to sit in this old thing without any windows, no foam on the seats, just hilarious ! After the drive I went back to my 'varnish-blast' :) We were busy and suddenly someone said, it's election day and the office is only open till 7.30 pm. I was curious how election goes on in Canada and so I hurried to the truck with everyone... We made it to the hall where the election box was at 7.28 pm. It was intersting to see the difference between our vote system and the Canadian one.