This Is the Way We Brand The Cows...

Last weekend we held our annual branding out at the ol' farm. We had a crew of about 20 people out there, which basically means I got to do most of the food stuff and not a whole lot else. I did bring a couple of the cows in, and helped take a smaller group back out to the pasture.

My MIL and I started the food the night before, cause it's a LOT of prep that goes into feeding 20 hungry cowboy workers.

That morning, we got a late start because it had poured rain the 2 days before and we wanted the sun to dry it out a bit. We got started about 10am, which is 3 hours later than normal. While most people went out to get the herd of cows, a couple of us stayed back. Which is a good thing, because the bulls actually escaped their pasture and got into one of our wheat fields just then. My MIL, myself and her best friend went and wrangled the big beasts back into their pasture. Apparently they thought just jumping over the gate was a great idea. We put up some panels over the broken wire and figured we could deal with them later. 

Then the branding began:

 

You may not recognize these two clowns, but they were featured two of the dancing cows in the video I posted on Monday :)

Most of the red cows in this picture are Patrick and I's. We try to keep them separate from the big herd because they are first calvers. We mix them with other first year calvers to make sure we keep a closer eye on them when they have their babies. They are certified Red Angus cows.

 Here Patrick is getting the hot branding irons out of the fire.

After all of the calves were branded and vaccinated, we ate!

Left side from the back you have the pulled pork, pickles, jello with whip cream, cucumber salad and rice krispies. Right side from the back is my super famous potato salad, fruit salad, brownies and cookies. For dessert was strawberry short cake! It was somewhat disappointing when I looked at it all like this, because it didn't look like we had done a whole lot. But it took 2 people about 6 hours of prep to do all of this! I don't mind though, I love cooking for crowds and making a bunch of stuff. 

So basically that's what we did last Saturday! And Sunday obviously was the day of the dancing cows. Weekends are never dull around here :)

So some bad news for this weekend-Pistol Annies had to cancel their appearance at the concert they were supposed to do, BUT Miranda Lambert is still coming to perform! Hey, I'm not complaining Jack! This will be my third time seeing her, and she puts on a helluva show!

Hope you all have a great weekend too!