Greetings – this is Percy writing this time…..we just returned from a great week at Tillers International in Michigan where we were up close and personal with a whole bunch of oxen.
What a great week – Mr. Collins, the President of MODA, really is a great ox drover. Carter said to tell Mr. Collins he was sorry about misbehaving in the woods one day. I didn’t know what to do but I just followed Carter’s lead and boy was that a mess. (Jim's note: the team was attempting to get hooked to a log when we think Carter got stung by a nettles plant and Carter got really excited because of the pain). Boy I somehow got wrapped around a sapling and didn’t know where to go. Both saplings broke and we managed to get safely out of the woods. Mr. Collins was also the main instructor for the Oxen Basics course. He taught us a lot about our capabilities and Mr. Jim learned a little bit also.
I am sure we will forget some of the students we met, but we really got to know Stephan from Georgia who spent a lot of time driving us around Tillers. Stephan’s dad helped us a lot also. We want to apologize to a man named Cameron for our misbehavior on Sunday when we were supposed to knock all those balls off the cones. It had been a long week and we were both tired and wanted to go back to the pasture by that time. Besides, what the heck was the use of knocking balls off a cone---now if they would have given us more logs to pull like we did the day before we would have done that. A young man named Kesi really gave us a workout the first few days. And a brave woman from California came all the way to Michigan just to see us. At least that is what Barb told us when she was driving us. We were really glad to show all these humans who may never have seen an ox before what we were all about. We hope all the class will continue their membership in MODA to learn more about oxen of all breeds and sizes. Oh we forgot to give our sympathy to the training calves that the students started. They got worked hard every day -twice a day- but soon caught on that the humans were the alphas.
We have to thank the Tillers staff who made us feel welcome in a really green pasture and checked on
Chub and Jerry welcomed us home with a lot of laughs about the times they had at Tillers. They got to go to a new green pasture while we were gone and we are finishing up the old one. Mr. Jim tells us that we have a lot of work to do this summer and we will take the time to tell you about all the places we will be and the people we met. Until the next time, happy trails and stay out of the nettles.
No comments:
Post a Comment