Your very own cattle herder

You are just going to have to use your imagination. And i´ll try and use my descriptive words. So I spend the night at my 11year old cousin´s house and have a blast coloring with her late into the night. (yes, coloring. i like to do it still. i hope that's okay with you. and if you were honest with yourself you would say you love it too :)  

We arrive at my house promptly at 9 to go to the other farm to change out the cows. (of course there was an hour+ long pause here because no one had bothered to milk the cows yet, and we had to go do that…) But clearly I was mistaken in what we were going to do. I actually have no idea what I thought “changing the cows” meant. I've just learned to accept that all days are adventure days here.

First it began with my brother getting kicked by the mule- thankfully he turned around really fast and it hit him in the butt and not somewhere else.

Then I proceeded to mount the same mule (yes, probably a crazy thing to do given the circumstances) on a hand made wooden saddle. (Yes, my butt hurt the next day.)

My cousin hopped on behind me on just a piece of carpet-cloth.

My brother mounted the pregnant mule who was “learning”, whatever that means.

My dad, mom, and farmhand took the car and of course of their machetes. 

We got to the other farm, probably about a mile away and proceeded to herd- I kid you not- 32+ cattle on this giant hill of a farm. 

Side notes: no one bothered to tell me that this is where they put all the brutes, the really mean cows. Consequently: all the guys decided that now was the appropriate time to fight, or to mount the girls, or to alternate between the two; when given a chance, they always took off for the door of the coral and bolted; they hate shots for infections- yes I witnessed this; and machetes are my favorite weapons of choice to scare them into obedience  (or I would just take to the other side of the barbwire fence J ). I also almost got kicked by the mule while i was running away from a charging cow. Apparently though i am faster than my brother (thank you soccer!) and didn't get kicked. 

And after all the work of rounding them up, deciding we were missing some, rounding more up, etc, we take 5 of them. Five. Cinco. Seemingly at random. Why we didn´t just take the first five we saw on the farm is a great question! Would have saved us a whole lot of pain! Anyway, we head back to our other farm, again me on a mule trying to herd them with my brother and my parents followed in the car. In total? 6 hours. And probably some of the funniest hours of my life. Please just picture me in sweat pants, rubber boots with crazy hair, sweating, on a mule and trying to herd cattle. And do yourself a favor and; laugh. Because I know I am. :)