June 27-28, 2021 Aberdeen, SD, working cattle, Watertown and Miller, SD

 6-27 Sunday.  We spent some time at the Crawford farm with our niece, Heidi, husband, Glen, and daughter, Claire.  It was nice to see them in person and share our condolences for the loss of their mother, grandmother.  Then back to Janice and Jim’s for pork carnitas.  Janice is also a good cook.

6-28 Monday. I was able to connect with a friend from Miller, SD for coffee.  Nancy Augspurger Carlson lives in Aberdeen, but we have been friends since grade school.
 

Mary and Nancy Augpurger Carlson

Then we drove with Janice and Jim to the farm of close friends of theirs east of Aberdeen, the Ogren’s.  In their retirement, Janice and Jim have been helping them with their cattle.  We also picked up a high schoolgirl that wants to become a veterinarian.  So she wanted the experience.  

The plan was to vaccinate 200 head of cattle.  First, they set up a corral in a pasture.  Then they herded them into the corral in batches.  They had to separate the calves from their mothers.  Then they sent 5 cattle at a time through a shoot.  Here they would vaccinate them with artificial insemination production hormones to help with fertilization.  They removed the CIDR, “Ceeder”.  This helps regulate their menstrual cycles so they will all be fertile at the same time.  When they were done, they moved them to a different pasture.  After 66 hours they will artificially inseminate them.  Quite a production.
 

Janice and I helped load the syringes and deliver them to the person injecting them.  Janice made treats for the guys.  We discussed later how easy it was for her to whip us bars for them 2 days in a row.  Dave said her number one goal is to please the boys.

sisters Janice and Mary

Janice with loaded syringes

handing off syringes for injection

cowboy Dave

great wrap on the hay bale

 

After we returned to Aberdeen and cleaned up, we met Glen and Garrett Crawford at Buffalo Wind and Rings for dinner. 

6-29 On Tuesday, we drove to Watertown to watch our great niece, Claire Crawford, play golf in a tournament.  She is a 7th grader and very good.  Dave was reminiscing about golfing on this course when he was in high school.  It’s larger and nicer now.  
After walking a few holes with Heidi, we went to the Franken’s for a late lunch.  We met Tom and Lesa Franken in Germany in 1978 when Tom and Dave were in the Air Force.  We had a great afternoon on their deck.  Always fun to catch up with them.

Mary and Dave, Lesa and Tom Franken

Dave and Tom Franken

Mary and Lesa and photo bomber

Next, we drove to Miller to see Joe and Gail Zeller for dinner.  We picked up dinner at a local “drive-in”. I can’t remember the name, but it used to be the A&W root beer stand I worked at in high school.  We sat and visited until about 9:30.  It’s easy to visit that long with them, but we also wanted to let the sun set so we wouldn’t have to drive into the sun.  That put us into Ft Pierre at the AmericInn kind of late, but we had reservations.

Gail had this made for Joe by our cousin Ken Schaefer