I'm back!

I am sorry for being dead to my blog for so long. I have spent the last week between my bed and the hospital's... I have been so incredibly sick!

Doctors don't yet know what I have, I have been sick for 12 days now and I am, excuse the lame pun, sick of it! I'm tired of laying in bed, not feeling good. I feel a great deal of pain in my stomac and lower abdomen, my digestive system is completely out of whack! I can hardly eat anything without resulting in major cramps, heartburn, stomach pain, etc.

I am currently catching up on my blog reading! I have run a little bit behind!!!! Thanks Jayke for featuring my blog and giving such nice comments! I have yet to put pictures of my farrier job on Peg... and I have not yet shod Pearl because I went down quickly. I am behind on trimming Dandy, I just cannot gather enough strenght to do it, I can barely make it half way up one flight of stairs, I don't think I can hold a hoof, trim it properly, rasp, and start again 3 times. I've lost 10 pounds in 6 days and am currently maintaining weight, although I am not eating very much.

I will try and get my pictures up tommorow... I've been trying to catch up on everything in the last few days, since I have been feeling a little better.

I have also been charged by a bull and have hurt my back considerably because of that. Our meat steers bursted out of their pen and were loose, so I took it upon myself, since SO was working to get them back in the pen safely, so I took my cane and off I went. I was not feeling too good either. So I push them back in the barn, all goes smoothly, until I notice that I have ommitted to block off one side of the barn... of course, they went in that corner... so I had to wait and get them out and point them in the right direction to get back in the pen. One steer is fine, he was castrated early and is pretty sweet, but the other one probably served as a bull and was castrated a few weeks before we bought him. I am pretty scared of him and he is very bold. He doesn't really want to go in the pen, so I'm flailing around trying to push him in and he turns to face me... right there, I knew that he might charge me, but I continued to flail and stepped forward one step..... I immediatly saw him tense up and in a split second, he was on me. Of course, I hit him on the nose bridge with my cane as hard as I could (by that time, it probably wasn't very hard, because I thought I was going to die!) and while backing up to avoid being air lifted by that massive head, I hit one post that is holding up the barn... I hit the corner of the steel plate on the post with my back, my right shoulder blade, between the tip of the blade and the spine. At that same moment, the bull stopped charging, so I don't need to tell you that I got out of there. He eventually followed his friend in the pen, but my back seriously hurt! I have a HUGE bruise and it's swollen now.

Needless to say that I was shaking like a leaf! I'm not necessarily used to working with cattle, I would've rather have a herd of wild horses running towards me instead! Thankfully, they are back to their pen and enjoying their lazy life. This beef will be for sale as All Natural beef, no growth hormones, no animal by-products. It should be very good!