2012: A Photographic Review

{2012 In Review | January 2012 - Upper Left; December 2012 - Lower Right}

2012 has come & gone, but before it's forgotten I wanted to put together a post with some of my favorite photos from the year. Above is photo collage featuring a favorite memory/event/highlight from each month starting with January in the upper left and reading left to right from top to bottom ending with December in the lower right.

Here's a little key:

Jan: Mexico!
Feb: Back To NDSU  
Mar: Little Bro's Big Win  
April: First 5k
May: Eric Church  
June: Cattle Shows
July: MJP Lut Wins!
Aug: Mashed Potatoes On A Stick & Fairs  
Sept: Blakeman Turns 1
Oct: Harvest
Nov: Breaking Cattle  
Dec: Homemade Christmas

Did you catch all that?

If not, here's a really quick month-by-month breakdown:

January: January brought my first every warm weather vacation and I loved every second of it. Free drinks, beach reading & a tan? Can a girl ask for anything better? I will take one every January.

{Perfect trip to Riveria Maya. You can read about it here.}

February: The highlight of February was that it was simply normal. Despite a quick work trip to the Gaylord Opryland hotel (which I will admit is completely ridiculous in its own right) in Nashville, I did a lot of relaxing, a little bit of crocheting and wasted a lot of hours watching Gossip Girl. Plus, we made a super fun trip back to our alma matter and I watched one of my favorites win Little I champion.

March: March brought amazingly warm weather so I decided to train for that what seemed like a marathon 5K I vowed to run. I also spent a lot of hours in the barn with my husband and we made a trip to SDSU to watch my little brother dominate the Little I sho.

April: A lot of things happened in April but none of them hold a candle to my first 5k. I was the girl who hated, maybe even despised, running and I did it. 3.1 miles conquered. It was a great feeling.

May: May is my birthday month so it was bound to be fabulous. We celebrated with an awesome trip to Church on a Thursday (Eric Church, friends!), a few trips to Twins game, a weekend trip to the lake and a lot of family time.

June: I could describe June with two words. Cattle. Shows. Luckily I got to spend a lot of time with the four people below and good cattle which made all of the sweat & disgustingness worth it. Another highlight? I donated my hair to someone who needed it more than me. Check that one off my 101 in 1001 list.

{Maynard, Jason, Matt & Mark - my summer travel companions.}

July: Would you even be surprised if I said July brought even more cattle shows? This resulted in NO blogging and a lot of road time, but the purple banner from Louisville and a new maroon jacket for my little brother made the road trips completely worth it.

{MJP Lut & the Purfeerst family}

 August: August was a bittersweet month for the May family. We had a lot of lasts. The last 4-H steer in the cooler, the last Dakota County 4-H beef show, the last championship drive as a nervous sibling and the last Minnesota State Fair auction. It was a fun run and we came a long way from that skinny dairy steer Andy May showed nearly 20 years ago. August was also the month we packed Jason up and sent him off to Kansas...and didn't anything hear from him for 2 and a half weeks.

By the way, the picture in the center square of the collage at the top of the page is my favorite photo of the year. I am so lucky to have all of them.

September: September flew by. We spent the month breaking calves and harvesting corn - a definite snapshot of the rest of my life. It was also a learning month for me. I learned how to rip (think tractor & field work), how to weigh corn and what it meant to officially be a farm wife. (You can read more about that here.)

October:  October 2012 will forever go down in the record books. Last year I was worried that everyone would be harvesting corn on my wedding day; in 2012, our last kernel was tucked safely in the bin on October 7th. Regardless of how unheard of it was, it meant I got my husband back, which was a definitely plus.

November: November marked one year as husband and wife for Mark & I. Our first year made me a firm believer in the power of marriage - you may have the very best relationship, but I promise, it will even get better when you say "I do" and I love that.

{christmas favorites | tree, skiing & mittens}

December: And then there was December. Could you agree that December was a completely exhausting month? Maybe we should blame it on my Type A personality that vowed to make everyone I know a homemade Christmas gift (there will definitely be a blog about how this might not have been the best idea) or that my kitchen became a mitten-making factory for a few weeks or that I am obsessive-compulsive when it comes to wrapping paper?

Anyway, besides the stress, December was the best. I learned how to ski, spent a lot of time with friends, was able to see my crazy family a lot and had a really gorgeous red & green house for a few weeks. There is nothing better in my opinion.

And now it's  January 10th. If the last 10 days are any indication of what's to come in 2013, it will be full of both challenges and blessings. And hopefully a lot more photos that capture more fantastic memories. :)

XoXo,

Hey Pretty Ladies! | Photos From The Pasture

This last weekend Mark and I spent our Saturday afternoon at the farm, like we do almost every weekend. Mark does not do townhome life well and every single chance he gets, he scoots away to the farm to the walk the pigs, wash heifers or spend some time in the tractor. And our weekends, usually always involve a trip to both of our parents to check on calves and help around the farm.

So, while Mark worked on breaking a new heifer, I grabbed my camera and snapped some pictures of the cows out on pasture. Because a majority of these cows spent their younger life in the show ring, they are super laid back and they easily let me wander around and take pictures. Plus, if a show heifer ever does get aggressive and protective after she has her first calf, she usually doesn't stick around in the herd for long. It's just not safe.

As a result, I was able to get a lot of fun pictures. In fact, I think it was more like 100+ fun pictures, but in our house, a certain someone could look at pictures of cattle for hours......so it worked out okay.

Some of my favorites are below and I added captions with some basic explanations. I know a lot of you who read my blog come from an ag background, but as Kate from At Home When I'm With You reminded me this week, not everybody does, so I tried to keep it simple! Let me know if you have any questions!

{In my opinion, beef cows have the good life. Give them sunshine, green grass and some water and they will happily lounge the day away. Check out the baby calf between the cows -- doesn't that look like bliss?!?}

{The front two are my favorite calves out of Molly this year. Molly is our donor cow who consistently produces great offspring, so we collect her embryos to put into other cows so they can raise a calf for her. It's kind of like a surrogate mother and it's an extremely efficient & quick way to improve our herd's genetics. These two calves are full sisters out of the bull, Silveira Style, and they're also full sisters to the heifer Mark gave me for our wedding. I can't wait to see how they are looking in the fall!}

{the calves were so curious about my camera and kept striking poses for me. Must mean a show career ahead?}

{"Hey, wait, I am not finished!" -- After spending about an hour out in the pasture, I decided these calves are spoiled rotten. They never get denied supper and you should she see how aggressive they are when they are nursing. Gentle isn't in their vocabulary when they are hungry. I hope it's not like that when I become a mom! This heifer calf was born in late February and she will nurse off her mother until she is "weaned" in September or early October.}

{can you tell she's one of my favorites!? Mark's family raises Angus (a breed of cattle that are normally all black), so when we get any color in the herd from our crossbred cows, we have a soft spot for them. I've labeled her our red-headed step child!}

{Eli is another favorite. Eli is a bull calf out of Matt's show heifer last year. We always breed our heifers to calving-ease bulls so they don't have any problems having their first calf, but Eli redefined calving ease. He was TINY. Luckily he is growing fast and Eli will either eventually be sold as a bull so he can breed other cows or he will become a steer (a castrated male) and we will either A. show him or B. raise him for meat.}

{Here's the Style calf that I mentioned above getting her supper. A good productive cow has one calf each year. Typically, she will have her calf in the early spring, nurse the calf all summer on pasture and then we wean her in the early fall and the whole process will happen again the next year. A cow's gestation cycle is just like a human - nine months!}

So the day in a life of cow-calf pair at Purfeerst Farms is pretty cushy, huh? 

Like I said, if you have any questions, just let me know. Next time, I will try to get some pictures of our Hereford cows at my parents. I used to be one of those people who would fight that my Hereford cattle were better than Angus any day, but since I married in, I am a lot more open minded! :)

XoXo,