Cow Pasture Golf
Several months ago, I discovered that there is a man just up Farm to Market Road 513 from us, who sells barrels. Some are food grade that were used for flavorings, oils, and things like that. Others were used for alcohol and are great for storing gasoline or diesel. Both food grade and nonfood grade come in plastic and metal and in several sizes. Since we live in the country, I have a metal barrel with the top cut out and holes in the sides near the house that I use for a burn barrel and another one back by the barn. A lot of the non-food grade barrels contained ingredients for cosmetics and shampoos. Those are the cheapest ones.
Since I have in the back of my mind that there is an ample supply of barrels just up the road, I have given some thought of how to use barrels around the farm. For instance, we have barrels with lids on them for chicken food that we are able to keep right in the chicken coop at the barn.
Since we have a big pasture, I have intended to put in a golf driving range.
The cattle keep the grass grazed down so it’s easy to find golf balls and pick them up with a shagbag (a bag with a tube and a handle that you use to pick up golf balls).
I thought seriously about putting yardage signs on corrugated plastic and mounting them on T-posts and looked for some that were already made on the internet. Then the guy up the road listed some 55-gallon non-food grade barrels on Facebook Marketplace for $5 each. A light went off. I ordered some big ten-inch number stencils from Amazon, went up the road and bought a trailer load of barrels. I brought them home, painted yardage numbers on them at fifty-yard intervals and put them in a straight line in our pasture. Within a couple of hours, my driving range was finished.
Next, I cut ten barrels in half, keeping one in the barn below the pulley at the roof. That one is for cleaning deer. For the other nine, I took some plastic chicken wire and formed a basket inside the barrel halves, drilled holes all around the barrel six inches below the opening and six inches apart, and fastened the plastic chicken wire inside the barrel. When it stops raining, I will place the nine half barrels around our pasture and that will be my cow pasture golf course. The only difference between “Cow Pasture Golf” and regular golf is that there are no greens, only baskets made of half a plastic barrel and plastic chicken wire. If you chip into the barrel, that counts as one stroke but if you hit the barrel that counts as two strokes, so there is a little strategy involved.
Now I will be cruising yard sales and second-hand shops for cheap golf clubs, bags and pull carts. Soon, if you drive on Hunt County Road 3214 just off of FM 513, you may well see me and hopefully friends or grandkids pulling a golf cart through the cow pasture, playing a round of “Cow Pasture Golf.”
And that, my friends, is how my retirement dreams have come true. 1. I’ve always wanted to live in an old historic house. (Our home is 130 years old this year.) 2. I have always wanted to live where I could hunt on my property. (The gate to my 200-acre deer lease is only ¼ mile from our driveway.) 3. I have always wanted to live on a golf course. But mostly, I have always looked forward to sharing retirement with my best friend Lori. Dreams do come true. “It’s not having what you want; it’s wanting what you got.” – Sheryl Crow, from the song Soak up the Sun.
KEN LEONARD
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