When You Play With the Bull, You Get the Soccer Net

The Farmette has moved!  Think of it as the movie version of The Popcorn Bowl.  The producers have decided to cast the role of the Farmette with a much more attractive actor, and my character will be played by Christina Hendricks.

The Farmette 2.0 is 46 acres of, "Pinch me! I live here?" beauty.  There is a fenced in yard for the dogs and a ramshackle of a chicken house that leads to many acres of grassy pasture for a cow and her much too old to be nursing, kid.  It's a perfect set up that should bathe the critters in vibrant contentment... NOT!

Athena the Lab started things off.  We came home from school about a week after moving in and the dogs were nowhere to be found.

"That's impossible! I said to the kids.  "How the heck did they get out?"  I probably didn't say heck but this is a family movie.

I saw that one of the gates was open.  We began calling to them.   Soon James Dean heard whimpering in the distance.  He went into the barn and found them locked in one of the stalls.  We had met a neighbor on the other side of the hill a few days earlier and I assumed he must have found the runaways and locked them in the barn.  Crisis averted.  I would pay my kindly neighbors a visit over the weekend and apologize for any damage caused by the puppy outing.

The next day we returned home and there was Pepper the Pyrenees safely inside the fence wiggling with excitement to see us, but no Athena.  The gate was closed this time.  James Dean decided to go check the barn again and there she was.  I was a little nervous because nothing says, "Hillbilly neighbors" quite like an annoying garbage eating, cat chasing dog showing up in your yard two days in a row.

It seemed a little strange that the neighbors hadn't left a note saying, "Keep your stupid dog in your yard" or something to that effect.  I decided to put my Nancy Drew skills to use and we left her unattended in the yard and went upstairs to watch from the window.  She immediately squished herself throw a space in the fence that attaches to the chicken house and headed directly to the barn where there must have been some remnants of food.  I was relieved that she wasn't pestering the neighbors and got to work with my staple gun, which I  am a pro at ever since the chicken tractor carnage of 2011.

The next day I had to pick her up from the dog catcher.

Two days later I am talking on the phone with the husband and notice, what I am sure must be an optical illusion that gave the appearance of the cows being on the wrong side of the fence.  No wait. Now they are in the middle of the road.  That is some optical illusion!

I jump in the car and race down the wrong side of the road honking my horn at the cows and the oncoming traffic.  The cows run into the front yard.  I jump out and wave my arms and scream like a lunatic.  Billy Beef gives me the stare down.  I am still unsure how they ended up back behind the fence, but I know there was hay involved.

The Beef scares the piss out of me.  Noelle is my baby.  Granted an 800lb baby, but she is fairly obedient and good natured.  Her delinquent kid is another story.  When we first moved in the husband put a soccer net in the pasture.  Still not sure why, but I am assuming he thought the boys could play in there while practicing for the Running of the Bulls. Run they did.  The soccer net soon became Billy Beef's favorite toy. He rubbed his head on it, tossed it in the air, and slept inside it.  I was sure he was going to break it into pieces.  I decided to go rescue the goal one afternoon when Beef and Noelle were all the way on the other side of the pasture.  I had managed to drag it almost to the edge of the fence when Beef comes charging at me full gallop. He is obviously not pleased that I am messing with his property.  Again, I wave my arms and scream like a lunatic while hiding behind the flimsy aluminum poles that hold up the net, sure that the boys are going to find me squished under their goal. I found a few rocks to throw at him which really pisses him off. Somehow I managed to leap over the barbed wire with only a minor tear in my pants and a major adrenaline rush.

I shouted a few terms of endearment in his general direction as he wandered back to his mother. I then pulled the goal to safety and moved it out of his sight.  The good thing about having an asshole steer is that I am no longer sad about him becoming Billy Filet Mignon. Being a cattle rancher is definitely not in my future.  I am thinking pygmy goats or maybe pandas?