Besides being song lyrics from one of my favorite bands (Turnpike Troubadours), this pretty much sums up my Thursday.
Getting started a 6 o’clock, really doesn’t make much of a difference if it never cools below 80 degrees. Even at sunrise it doesn’t take long to break a good sweat.
Grulla and I headed out to gather some calves that needed to be dewormed. I was sorting a few off, turned around and the silly guy had walked right up the chute alley. Geeze I’m lucky he’s a calm horse.
Boss decided to head out to load some square bales. Just 300 of em, did I mention the air temp today was 103? Yeah we didn’t head out til after noon. Of course there was no breeze. Ugh it was H.O.T. Any hay hauling in this weather is too much if ya ask me.
Then we had the joy of driving smack dab through the middle of Little Rock traffic and the brakes on my trailer weren’t exactly working well. There were several semis taking loads of round bales down I-30 to Texas. The hay market here in Arkansas isn’t too strong (yet?) so some are choosing to ship their hay out of state. I wish they would support the livestock producers here at home because we’ll be lucky to get a second decent cutting of hay.
Then about 25 miles from the barn I had a tire blow out on the trailer. My first thought went back to the trailer house that burned down in the middle of the highway a few weeks ago due to a blow out. Yeah a house fire in the middle of the highway. No big deal, I never leave home without a spare tire. But really would have appreciated a lil respect from the semi truck drivers as they didn’t bother to move to the inside lane while I was on the side of the highway.
Luckily my hay trailer didn’t have the same fate as the house, and we made it to the barn safely. I’ll wait to unload and stack it all when I can get a sunrise start where maybe it’ll be a lil cooler. Relatively speaking of course.
Yep, it was indeed a long, hot summer day in ranch life.
