AUGUST 27, 2013 – Andrea had a tough time for awhile after
losing the fragile skin on the sides of her knees; the pain was
excruciating—like being burned all over again.
She has been to the doctor several times and was put on antibiotics
because her legs became so hot and swollen.
They are doing a little better by now and it looks like the raw areas
are starting to fill in some skin around the edges.
Young
Heather and I are coming along with Dottie’s training.
This past week we got her used to wearing a
breeching (to hold the saddle in place because she doesn’t have enough withers
to keep it from going up onto her neck when she’s going downhill).
The first day we put it on her and started to
walk her around she spooked and tried to run, making speedy circles around
Heather at the end of the lead rope.
At
least she didn’t try to pull away—she was just running as hard as she could go
in a tight circle.
When she finally
calmed down she realized it wasn’t hurting her, and from then on she was ok
with it.
We gave her one lesson in the
corral and now we’re riding her with it and no longer have to get off and reset
the saddle several times when going downhill!
Freddy (the
cow that almost died) is doing better now but still very thin. She’s been covered with horn flies lately, so
last Friday I put some delousing pour-on along her back when I fed her some
alfalfa hay, since it will also kill flies.
By the next morning there were NO flies on her. We’re still keeping her separate from the
other cows so they won’t beat up on her as she continues to recover and regain
lost weight.
On Saturday
we moved the herd from heifer hill to the swamp pasture, then Dani rode with me
for 4 hours up through the 320 and high range to check gates, troughs and
Michael’s cattle. That night we had a
birthday dinner for Charlie (12 years old!) at Andrea’s house.
Sunday
afternoon Andrea, the girls and I went for a very short ride—Andrea’s first
ride in over a month (since before she went to work at the fire camp). She bandaged her raw knees but they were
still so painful that we only rode for about 30 minutes.
Today the
kids went back to school.
I rode Dottie
on a short ride on the low range, with young Heather riding Ed as my “baby
sitter horse”.
Afterward, while she
waited for old Chance to eat his mush of watered alfalfa pellets and senior
feed, Heather worked with Sprout (the 7-year-old spoiled mare we bought last
year), teaching her better ground manners.
The first time she worked with Sprout, a few days ago, the mare—who is
very stubborn and independent—didn’t want to trot in a circle and reared up and
tried to strike at her, so Heather got after her with the popper on the end of
the halter rope and made her work, trotting in circles, stopping and turning
the other direction, etc. on command.
By
the end of the session Sprout had a lot more respect for her handler.
We’ve been pasturing Chance and Molly
here for Heather this summer.
They’ve
been eating the grass in the hay stack yard, grazing the tall grass behind the
barn, etc. and currently they’re grazing along the ditch bank above the little
pasture where Freddy and her calf are living.
Chance has bad teeth and can’t chew his food.
Heather feeds him a big tub of “mush” once a
day and it takes him an hour to eat it.
So while she waits for him to eat, she does ground work with Sprout and
Willow (the yearling
filly).
Both of them are coming along
nicely in their training program.
Molly
finishes her grain/pellets much quicker than Chance, and then tries to eat his,
so Heather brings Chance through the gate into the pasture so he can finish his
mush without help. But today Freddy
realized Chance had something good and she marched up there and started eating
with him. I wish I’d taken a photo of
them eating together—the skinniest old horse and the skinny cow sharing a tub
of mush together! I hurried up there to
chase Freddy away from Chance’s feed, and locked her and her calf in the
orchard until Chance could finish his meal.
SEPTEMBER 7 – Andrea had a big abscess on her leg last week
(staph infection from the raw areas) and went to the doctor to have it lanced
and drained. She is on antibiotics
again. The raw areas are healing now,
and getting smaller. She also had to go
to the dentist for emergency repair/covering of two molars that broke—and will
eventually need crowns. By this week the
pain in her legs and her mouth is more tolerable! She is riding Sprout again, with thin
bandages over the raw area on her knees, and managing ok.
Heather and I have been riding
Dottie every morning, making longer rides on the low range.
Some days Andrea rides with us.
Last Friday I rode Dottie and
Heather rode Ed, then later that day Andrea, Dani and I rode Sprout, Ed and
Breezy 4 hours to check on the range cows and gates, and moved some cattle
around the mountain to better grass.
When we headed out through the
sagebrush from the big salt ground, Breezy got caught in a snarl of old wire
and it scared her; she jumped and bucked and tried to bolt, and nearly fell
down.
Fortunately the wire broke and she
kicked out of it before we had a bad wreck.
This is some of the wire the BLM left out there after they made a
temporary fence to keep the cattle out of the area that burned up in 2003.
The wire has been a serious hazard, being
dragged around by wildlife and cattle.
Michael and Carolyn rolled up a pick-up load of it a few years ago,
along the ridge above our 320 after getting their horses in it, but there was
still some left out there.
It was strung all through the
sagebrush where we were riding that day.
A couple minutes after Breezy tore loose from one tangle of wire, Dani
spotted another big wad of wire just ahead of her horse, and was able to stop
in time and didn’t get into it.
Moments
later Andrea’s horse got her hind feet in some wire, but stopped and Andrea got
off and picked up Sprout’s feet and got the wire off her hind legs.
Last Sunday Lynn, Andrea, Charlie
and a friend took 2 4-wheelers up on the high range and spent the afternoon
rolling up as much wire as they could carry home on the 4-wheelers, after
fixing one of the water troughs that was leaking.
Charlie enjoyed helping. The next day they
went back up there and rolled up more wire.
While they were doing the wire,
Heather, Dani and I rode through the middle range to give Dottie another training
ride.
We’ve been riding her every day
and she’s coming along very well.
Thursday afternoon a big storm went
over the mountain (and missed us—we only got a little bit of rain) and knocked
out the power line into our valley.
The
power was off for 17 hours.
We didn’t
want to use much water in the house because the pump couldn’t run, so Friday
morning we carried water from the creek for flushing the toilet and got several
gallons of drinking water from my brother’s spring above the upper place.
We took some of the horses to the creek to
drink.
We were about to haul water from
the creek to the rest of the horses—after our short training ride with
Dottie—when the power came back on that afternoon.
Our phone still doesn’t work, however.
Something happened during the power outage to
mess up some of the phones and computer lines and the phone company is working
round the clock to try to get everything fixed.
Today Andrea and I rode Sprout and
Ed 5 ½ hours to check troughs and cattle on the high range.
It was a hot day and Andrea stopped at a
water trough to fill her water bottles.
We spent most of the afternoon
rolling up more of the old fence wire.
Actually
Andrea rolled up the wire and I held her horse.
We had 3 rolls—one tied on my
saddle, one on Andrea’s and she was carrying another.
She got off Sprout to lead her down the very
steep hill going down to Peach Pit trough from the ridge between Baker Creek
and Withington Creek and put the loop she was carrying over the saddle
horn.
Going down the mountain Sprout
tripped, and the loop of wire sailed off the saddle horn, over her head, and
bounced.
The mountain is so steep at
that point that by the next bounce the roll was several hundred feet down the
slope.
It bounced again, right over the
top of an old dead tree!
It bounced a
few more times down the draw, gaining momentum at every bounce, and finally
came to rest half a mile from us, where the draw makes a bend.
Our horses just stood there entranced,
watching the spectacle.
SEPTEMBER 17 – Our phone finally started working again last
Sunday afternoon and I was able to do the 3 interviews early Monday morning
that I was supposed to do the Friday before. Afterward, Andrea and I rode Breezy and Dottie
up the ridge to the 320 to check the fence—because Carolyn had mentioned that a
cow was hiking down the mountain behind their house just before dark the
evening before. When we rode up toward
our fence we encountered 5 pairs, but they were range cows that had come down
from the high range. As we got closer to
the 320 we saw the gate was wide open.
Someone had cut all 6 wires and taken the gate out! The range cows had come clear through our
place, so we knew there must be a gate open at the top of the 320 as well.
Michael and
Carolyn and young Heather were riding that day on the range across the canyon,
helping those ranchers round up, and we could see them bringing a bunch of
cattle out of Cheney creek, above our fence corner on that side. Andrea called Michael on his cell phone (fortunately
we had cell service up on our ridge and he did, too) and told him what we’d
discovered. We had tied up the gate
temporarily with baling twine (which I always carry in the jacket tied to my
saddle) and were heading home to switch horses—since Dottie was too
inexperienced to do any cow sorting--and come back to check their cows.
Michael,
Carolyn and Heather cut short their help for the neighbors and hurried back
across the canyon to their corrals to grab some wire and come fix the
gate.
We got home with Dottie and
Breezy, grabbed Ed and Sprout, and trotted back up the ridge to the 320.
Almost all of Michael and Carolyn’s cows were
down in the northeast corner, which was strange.
None of them had come out the cut gate on the
ridge.
We hurried on up Baker Creek and
found 4 more pair and a calf, and the gate in Baker Creek was ok.
So we knew the leak had to be the top ridge
gate.
We hurried up through the timber
to the ridge and met up with Michael, Carolyn and Heather heading up to check
that gate.
With the cattle we’d seen in
Baker Creek all of their cows and calves were accounted for, which was a
relief.
None had gone out the open
gates.
The top
ridge gate had also been cut and thrown open—with cattle tracks, horse tracks
and 4-wheeler tracks coming through.
Someone had taken cattle from the high range and pushed them through our
320 acre pasture to the low range! We
rebuilt the cut gate, then rode back down Baker Creek and checked the 2 side
gates (both ok) and rebuilt the bottom ridge gate. There were 4-wheeler tracks coming down
through that gate and on down the ridge—which Andrea and I hadn’t noticed
earlier.
So it’s
still a mystery. Did hunters cut the
gates to come through on 4-wheelers? Did
a rider bring the range cows down through and cut the gates or do it after the
gates were already cut? We’re not sure
exactly what happened, but we are glad none of Michael’s cattle got out and no
range cows stayed in the 320.
The next
day Andrea and I rode Dottie and Breezy up through the 320 to check on things,
and on up into the high range, coming home through the middle range.
It was Dottie’s longest ride so far (nearly 4
hours).
Andrea has been riding with me on
Breezy or Sprout nearly every day, and Dottie is coming along nicely in her
training.
Michael, Carolyn and Heather
have been riding for more than a week helping round up cattle on the other
range.
There are some fences down and
some of the cattle have scattered into other allotments and will take awhile to
find them all.
On Thursday
we put a temporary electric fence (3 strands) across Willow’s pen to split it, and put Dottie in
this end of it. We had to get her out of
the pen next to the house and elm tree before the elm starts shedding its
leaves this fall. Dottie loves to eat
the leaves and this spring ate so many (before we trimmed the low-hanging
branches she was reaching up to nibble on) that it made her a little sick. I trimmed Willow’s feet while we were keeping her at
the far end of the pen as the fence was being built.
Friday Dani
rode with Andrea and me on Dottie’s training ride. We met some hunters on horseback, and then
another group that had just shot 2 elk as the herd came up out of our
neighbor’s fields in the early morning.
The man we talked to was a volunteer for a Wounded Warriors program,
taking handicapped war veterans on various hunts.
On Saturday
Alfonzo and the Amish rounded up their cows off our range. They had 15 riders and took the cattle the
longest way home. Instead of bringing
them home the short way through the middle range like Galen Kossler (our old
range neighbor) used to do, they took them clear up over the mountain at the
head of Baker Creek and down into Withington Creek—then all the way down the
creek. They sorted them above our upper
place, and broke the fences in several places, then brought them down in two
groups. They dumped Alfonzo’s cows into
the old Gooch place and brought Miller’s cattle on down the road and over to
their place. They are still short some
cattle and will probably be riding several more days to try to find them.
Saturday
afternoon my cousin Ned and his wife Pam came to visit and stayed a few
days.
They are on their way to
Fox Island
(in Puget Sound, near
Seattle Washington)
from
Texas.
Pam is making some really nice curtains for
Andrea’s house—for all the kids’ bedrooms and living room.
Yesterday
Michael and Carolyn rounded up their yearlings and brought down to our corral
for overnight.
We got in our small herd
and sorted off the pairs with calves we are going to sell, and put them in the
orchard.
This morning at daylight we
sorted off the calves and sent them with Michael’s yearlings to the sale at
Butte, Montana.
The calves are only 5 months old and not very
big, but hopefully they will bring a good price.
Later we
weaned the rest of our calves—the heifers we are keeping, and 2 bull calves,
and put them in the little pen below the barn, next to their mothers in the
adjacent field. There’s good grass in
that pen so they won’t need to be fed hay.
Freddy’s bull calf is already weaned (5 days ago) and out in my horse
pasture, so in a few days we’ll put the other 2 bull calves with him. The heifers can live with Freddy in the
little field above the house; we saved that grass for them. Hopefully Freddy can gain back her lost
weight.
