Corn crop?

Carl noticed some corn that Jimmy was growing...

...it seemed to be in an interesting spot...

...in the back of the pickup truck!

Jimmy ended up pulling it out a day or so after Carl took the picture... too bad, we thought that the "beasties" might be able to get *fresh* corn one day later in the season!

Breeding time

Carl took most of these pictures and talked to the tank maintenance guy, so he supplied much of the information in this post!

Mandy came into heat recently, and it was time to breed her... so Regina took care of AI'ing her:

Mandy ready for breeding

She was waiting patiently...

Regina preparing to AI

AI

A straw with identification information on it

The picture isn't great zoomed in, but...

It says "Oliver P"

and "7JE1219"

Remember that information for later in this post...

The cryogenic storage container (tank) where the straws are stored

Regina keeps track of which bull's semen is in which compartment of the tank.

I think this is a "cane" of multiple straws

A few days later, the guy came to refill the refrigerant (liquid nitrogen) in the tank and to bring straws for Regina.

Carl took some pictures of the information about the bulls from the Select Sires catalog:

This was the bull that Regina bred Mandy to

http://my.selectsires.com/public/bullpage?animalidentifier=7JE1219&Language=ENG
Remember this information was on the straw pictured above?

https://selectsiresbeef.com/bull/angus/riverbend-good-book-f255/

A previous user of the tank had dropped some straws into the bottom which made it difficult to store straws in the tank - so the maintenance guy was trying to "fish" the loose ones out.

Retrieving the straws from his storage tank that Regina wanted to purchase.

Replacing the canes with the straws for Regina into her tank

Then he filled the tank with liquid nitrogen

The guy comes about every 4 months to fill the tank to ensure that it stays at the proper temperature - around -330F!

It was interesting to be here during this process of the farm operation!

Getting stuff done!

We've been getting stuff done here at the farm...

Jimmy did tons of work on Gracie in the shop

Carl got the maintenance done on the Oasis system (diesel powered heat and hot water)

I got up on the roof and we measured the height of Gracie

 

Carl took a picture of me on top of the rig... you can barely see my head up there by the roof of the shop.

We mowed under some more fences

We got the SeeLevel system ordered, received...

... and figured out the customization of the senders to install...

... prepared the tanks to attach the senders...

... temporarily taped the senders to the side of the tanks.

We're having some issues with the information being sent from the device, but we're not sure whether we can resolve it until we are at a campground with full hookups so we can fill and empty the tanks multiple times. We did some testing on it today before we dumped and we are feeling a little better about the accuracy of the information.

Got the tires on the Jeep rotated and balanced, and had a tire repaired that had a slow leak.

We're slowly getting things finished!!!

Some pictures of "us"

We had wanted to get some "professional photos" of Carl and me together, so we asked if Jimmy or Regina knew of anyone who would do pictures... one of their friends from church, Phyliss, does photography and came over a few days ago to take pictures of us. We are so happy with the results!

Phyliss looked for places that were "interesting" - this one was in the big barn on the steps up to the hay loft... you can see that there were a lot of "things" around us...

But we loved this pose and this photo the best!

We tried an "American Gothic" reproduction pose, but... I don't think we achieved it! (We didn't remember much about what was in the painting other than a pitchfork.)

Here is a progression -- next to a small trailer with small rectangular hay bales on it and large round bales in the back.

Once Phyliss edited it down - so nice!

Then I got up on the hay bales on the trailer...

Phyliss said that this background made it look like I had a "halo" (a big round bale behind me) - I said it was more likely a "hay-lo"!

Again, Phyliss' edited version looks so nice!

Phyliss had done some research on Pinterest for some pose ideas - this was one from there...

I think this may have been another Pinterest pose.

Another "series" - we were walking off into the sunset...

 But we decided to come back!

Then she did a few shots beside Gracie -- in these first two you can just see Miss Doozie peeking around in the background on the right.

We enjoyed the experience (although it was VERY hot) and we are so grateful to have the pictures!