JUNE 1 – Last week we had a little rain. Michael drove over
to Dillon, Montana last Thursday to get a load of poles for his fencing jobs,
and planned to make a second trip in the afternoon, but the weather got worse
(snowing on the mountain pass) and he didn’t want to risk sliding that big
trailer off the bad road. He turned around and came back home, to make that
trip another day.
In the rainy weather our electric fences weren’t working
very well; one of the young cows (Sugar Bear) went through a fence, and during
the night Willow tore down the electric fence around the top end of her pen. I
fixed it the next morning, and we also moved the cows and calves around to the
lower swamp pasture. When we brought the herd through the lane by my hay shed,
and calving pen, I could hear a calf coughing. It was Charky. She had a snotty
nose and was breathing hard. All the wet, cold weather probably made her more
susceptible to a respiratory infection. We sorted out her and her mom and put
them in the far pen next to the barn, since that pen has a tarp over one corner
to make a little roof. On the way through the pen in front of the barn, we
captured Charky at the headcatcher and gave her injections of antibiotic and an
anti-inflammatory medication to help ease her respiratory distress.
By the next day we realized she had diphtheria rather than
pneumonia (swelling in her throat and upper airway, hindering air passage) so
we changed antibiotic and gave her a shot of dexamethasone to help reduce the
swelling so she could breathe easier. One way you can tell the difference
between pneumonia (infection/inflammation in the lungs) and diphtheria
(infection/inflammation in the throat/windpipe) is that an animal with diphtheria
will have trouble inhaling because the windpipe is restricted. An animal with
pneumonia has more trouble exhaling--with more effort required to push air back
out of the damaged lungs. This calf was struggling to breathe, and coughing,
especially if she moved around and exerted very much. We treated Charky for
several days, until she got over her cough and was healthy again.
Last Saturday we had a hard rain and a hailstorm, but Charky
had her sheltered corner to get out of the downpour. I got soaking wet doing my
evening chores. It was Andrea’s birthday so we all had dinner at her house. The
rain had stopped by then, but her driveway was too muddy/slippery to drive our
pickup up there safely, so Lynn and I drove up there on the 4-wheeler. Robbie
baked Andrea a cake, and the kids had fun decorating it.
The rain and cool weather prompted us to use the wood stove
again on a couple of the coldest mornings, but our chimney was plugged with
soot. Robbie and Lynn got up on the roof and used a long plastic pipe to clean
the chimney.
Last week the Millers turned their cows out on the range,
but Alfonzo kept his in longer, feeding them some old hay and straw that he
bought cheaply. He has his cows crammed into the little field above our place,
feeding them in a tiny area above the ditch. Wasted hay and straw, and wads of
twine and net wrap are falling into the ditch and obstructing the flow, and not
much water is coming on down to our field. Frustrating. First he starves his
cows during winter by not feeding them at all until late February (after
overgrazing all of his fields and pastures, and several of them died of
starvation) and now he’s overfeeding them some very poor quality hay instead of
turning them out on green grass on the range. We don’t understand that man!
Over in our swamp pasture, two of our yearling heifers
(Panda and Surprise) jumped over the crossfence to get in with the cows and
calves, but we’ll probably just leave them in that group for now. I pulled up
the net wire they’d mashed down and repaired the fence so no more heifers would
try to jump over it.
The next day Lynn and I went to town for our appointment
with the dermatologist, who froze several precancerous lesions off both of us
(my face, Lynn’s face and arms). We’ve both had too much sunshine exposure, for
too many years!
Dani is playing soccer this year and really enjoying it. She
and a boy her age are their team’s best kickers; both of them played hockey and
were good at it, and that seems to give them some kind of advantage.
The kids went on several field trips during the last weeks
of school. Dani’s class went to a ranch and had fun panning for garnets. A few
kids found some nice stones.
Andrea and Robbie put up an electric fence in the field
below our lane, to divide off the hay field from the swampier side that we
can’t cut for hay. We moved the cows to that side where they can graze for a
week or so. That pasture stays wet all summer and is too boggy for haying
equipment, but grows back 2 or 3 times for our rotational grazing.
Later that day Andrea and I rode Breezy and Ed to check the
fence around our little hill pasture, to make sure the range cows won’t get
into it. Several of the wires were off in the posts in the gully at the far
corner, and we had to fix that spot.
Our water problems are starting early this year. There is
lots of water in creek but not much in our 2 ditches that come through the
Gooch place. Alfonzo keeps damming them off to use most of the water on his
fields and isn’t letting very much come on down to our place, even though we
have a prior water right for those ditches.
We have the opposite problem on the upper place, where
Michael and Carolyn are trying to irrigate their fields. They have plenty of
water, and are sharing their wild meadow ditch with Barb Peets (who lives on
the small acreage below them, around the hill from the wild meadow). She wanted
more water for her little pastures and to keep her pond full. But the neighbor
below Peets, Bob Loucks, keeps sneaking into the upper place and shutting down their
headgate on that ditch. He claims they are flooding him. There’s water subbing
out of the ground just above his house.
The actual problem was the wet spring (lots of rain),
saturated ground, and the pond that Peets’ dug 35 years ago as a swimming hole
for their kids. They run their ditch into that pond, and it was very full all
spring. It actually doesn’t hold water very well; some of the water seeps out
the bottom. There seems to be an underground water course from that pond. When
we were leasing the Gooch place (for 40 years), we started having problems with
a bog near the top end of the field below Loucks’ place, after Peets’ created
their pond. There was a large area that we couldn’t cut for hay anymore (the
machinery would sink into the bog) so we just used that part of the field for
cow pasture in the fall.
Alfonzo finally turned out his cows on the range last
Thursday, so they are no longer jammed in the little field that our ditch comes
through.
That evening we went to the school’s Spring Concert to hear
Sam and Charlie play in their band concert (Charlie on the trombone, Sam with
her trumpet), and singing in their chorus. The kids all did a great job.
A few days ago we moved the machinery and the brush pile out
of the pen below the lane. The brush was from the fence rebuilding project this
past winter. With those obstacles out of the way, I put the old gray horses out
there to have a bit of green grass. Veggie is now 30 and Rubbie is 29. They are
happy to be out on grass again.
Today we patched the electric wire the deer tore down last
night—before the cows got out into the hay field. Then Andrea went to Dani’s end-of-school
track meet. Tomorrow will be the last day of school for the kids. They had an
awards assembly this afternoon; Sam and Charlie each received music awards, and
Sam got a special award from her teachers for being the friendliest 7th
grader.
JUNE 15 – Two weeks ago I put front shoes on Sprout; she was
becoming too tender-footed and I couldn’t wait until Michael had time to shoe
her.
The middle school had an end-of-school party for the kids,
and Andrea took photos of the kids before they went to that event.
We’re still having water problems. Bob shut off Michael’s
ditch again, and Alfonzo is stealing our water before it gets to heifer hill!
Last Saturday we moved the cows from the little pasture
below the lane and put them down in the post-pile pasture. We are rotating them
through several small pastures until we can get the hayfields cut and some
grass growing back on those fields—IF we get enough irrigation water to get
adequate regrowth.
We had a streak of hot weather, and our high snow on the
mountains is about gone. Our high water is past; the creek is dropping. We hope
to get the hay off a little early this year so we’ll still have enough water to
irrigate the fields afterward.
Our old machinery needs lots of maintenance. Robbie took one
of the balers apart last week and we ordered the new parts we’ll need for
fixing it.
Last Monday morning there was a lot of bawling down in the
post-pile pasture when I went out to do chores, so I hiked down there and
discovered a stray calf was in with our cows. Several range cattle had gotten
into Alfonzo’s field down below our place, and one of their calves had come up
through our fence. The calf was very wild, and ran into the middle of our group
of cattle that had come to greet me. I waited awhile until the calf’s mother’s
bawling finally got his attention and he went back down to the fence. I quietly
started down toward him to try to take him along the fence to hopefully find a
weak spot where he’d come through, but those wild range cows took off, and the
calf went ballistic and crashed over/through the fence like a wild animal.
Then I walked along the fence in the bushes and found a spot
where he might have come in—and patched it with a bunch of tree branches. That
morning we called Alfonzo to tell him there were range cows in his hayfield. He
was unaware that the range neighbors on that side had moved their cattle into
the area next to our places, and he would soon have a field full of cows
because he’d left his back gate open! So he was grateful that we told him about
those cows.
I’ve been letting Ed graze several hours each day in the
lane by my hay shed, to gaze down the tall grass before we stack new hay in
there. She enjoys the green grass!
We had a storm and very strong wind a few days ago, and it
blew the tarp off the bales of hay in the pen below the lane. Now the weather
has turned hot again. Michael, Nick and Robbie are very busy building fences for
a lot of people around our valley, and are now starting very early in the
mornings (before sunup) so they can beat the heat and get most of their work
done before late afternoon.
Andrea has been doing all our irrigating again this year,
trying to keep the fields green and growing—to grow our hayfields and pastures.
Her dogs love to go with her as she goes around to all the fields to change the
water, and I snapped this photo as they came through our driveway.
Last Tuesday Andrea took Lynn over to Missoula, Montana for
his doctor’s appointment with the neurosurgeon/back specialist. After looking
at the MRI results, Dr. Mack said that he would not be able to do anything
surgically to help Lynn’s back; there is too much damage and deterioration. But
he did prescribe some medication that he says is safer than the pain meds and
Tylenol that Lynn has been taking (which is hard on kidneys and liver) and told
him to try it. This is actually an anti-seizure medication and works on about
half the patients who try it for back pain. Lynn has been taking it, and it
does help—but he only takes it at night because it makes him drowsy. He’s
getting much better sleep than he’s had for many years!
Andrea and I have been riding Sprout and Dottie a few times,
to start getting them back in shape again. When we came home from a long ride
Wednesday afternoon, we repaired some old fence along the lane above the
post-pile pasture and let the cows in there for a couple of days, since they were
running out of grass. Then we let the cows graze our stackyard above the
corrals for one day.
Alfonzo and Millers finally moved their cattle out of the
low range pasture and took them to the middle range. Then we were able to move
our cows to our little hill pasture above our house. We always have to wait
until the range cows are gone, to make sure no bulls try to come through the
fence and breed our cows. We don’t put our bulls in with our cows until late
June. We don’t want our cows bred this early, or the fence torn down. We
especially don’t want our cows bred to Alfonzo’s bulls because that would put
our cows at risk for several diseases that we don’t want in our herd.
Andrea, Sam and Dani and I rode over the low range to make
sure there were no range cattle left behind in the low pasture, and didn’t see
any, so we went ahead and moved our cows and calves to the hill pasture. I took
this photo of Dani as we were looking for stray cows.
Robbie got our baler put back together after we had the
plunger welded, and hopefully the old thing will work better than it did last
year. Lynn loaded manure from our bull corral for David Yoder (who brought down
his little trailer) for his garden.
Charlie took his second level test (now that he has earned his
ham radio operator’s license) and passed it, so now he is determined to take
the highest level test.
On Sunday Emily drove out here to take photos for young
Heather and her fiancé for their wedding invitations, and showed us her new
car. She borrowed $8000 at the bank (her first loan, to start establishing her
credit) to purchase this 2008 Chevrolet. It is in really great shape and gets
good mileage, and is bright red—her favorite color.
Day before yesterday the range cattle next to our back field
were pressing our fence, and that evening we could hear bulls bellowing and
fighting. We went down there to make sure they hadn’t crashed through the
fence, and they were dispersing by the time we got there. But the next morning
when Andrea went down there to change water in that field, she discovered that cattle
had knocked the fence down and gotten into our field. They’d mashed down some
of the hay. Andrea propped the fence back up again.
Andrea, Dani and I rode that afternoon and chased some range
cattle away from the fence. That evening Robbie helped us set some steel posts
in the fence to hold it up.
Andrea has a very sore, red eye, ever since a branch hit her
in the eye when we were riding through some brush. She went to the eye doctor,
who sent her to an eye specialist in Idaho Falls, so she and Carolyn drove over
there early this morning. Andrea was able to go to the eye doctor late morning,
and then to meet with the court-appointed mediator in the custody case.
The mediator met with Andrea, and with Mark (separately, in
another room) and tried to encourage them to work out some kind of compromise
so this case won’t have to go to trial. The mediator was very good, and Andrea
was willing to make some concessions (and let Mark off easier on his contempt
of court judgment and give him more time to get her name off the mortgage
without him having to sell his house) but Mark refused to budge. I guess he’d
rather spend thousands of dollars on a trial trying to save a few hundred
dollars in child support! He doesn’t really care about the kids (and his
girlfriend hates them) and this whole battle seems to stem from the fact he
wants to take the kids away from Andrea and not have to pay child support! We’d
hoped for a miracle and some kind of peaceful resolution without having to go
to court, but we are not surprised that the mediation attempt didn’t work.
JUNE 30 – What erratic weather! The last couple days have
been in the 90’s, while just two weeks ago we had morning temperatures below
freezing! The weather was so cool for several days that the cows on the hill
pasture didn’t drink much water and we only had to pump water for them three
times to fill the tanks while they were on that pasture. One of those mornings it
was so cold that Lynn and Andrea had trouble getting the pump started.
The range cows on the other side of our place have been
pressing our fence along the back field, and last Saturday Michael, Robbie and
Justin (the high school graduate who has been helping on their fencing jobs)
built a sturdy jack fence along the lower end of that field so the range cows
can never push the fence over again. There’s a spring there that keeps the
ground boggy and it’s hard to keep posts upright when the cattle keep reaching
and pushing to get through the fence, which they always try to do when the
range grass is dry or gone. They want to get into our green fields. The jack
fence should solve the problem.
The next day Andrea and Robbie set steel posts along the ditch
in our field above the corrals, and put up a hot wire so we can graze the strip
along the ditch like we did last year. We put the cows there when we brought
them down from the hill pasture, and put the yearling heifers (from the upper
swamp pasture) with them.
Willow went under her hot wire again. She’s always reaching
under it for grass, even though it’s 4 strands of electrified tape. She got clear
under it and then couldn’t figure out how to get back, and was stuck between
the electric fence and the boundary fence of her pen. I rescued her, but two
days later she did it again. That time she was stuck in the little corner by
the crab-apple tree.
We have the tree fenced out of her pen because we don’t want
her eating all the apples (fallen and reachable ones) when they ripen, since
overeating on them can cause colic. So, I took down the hot wires and
extricated her, and moved her to another pen (our extra calving pen next to the
house). She can live there until we rebuild her fence with no-climb netting—something
she can’t chew on--so it won’t need to be augmented with electric wire to keep
her from destroying the wood fence. She is too smart, and figures out ways to
nibble right next to an electric wire without getting shocked.
Andrea has been diligently irrigating, trying to keep our
fields growing, but she’s been constantly short of water on our shared ditches
that come down through the Gooch place. Alfonzo keeps using his share and some
of ours, too. Last week she was very short of water for heifer hill and hiked
up the ditch to see what was wrong. She found that Alfonzo had stuffed a bunch
of net wrap and hay twine in the ditch to divert the water out before it could
come down to our place. She spent about 30 minutes digging and pulling about 80
pounds of saturated junk out of the ditch and headgate, and strained her
shoulders and back.
Last week Bob Loucks called a big water meeting at his
house, theoretically in an attempt to resolve the water issues but more
obviously to tell us all what he wants us all to do regarding our own ditches. He
told us he would have a lawyer there to interpret the legal aspects, but the
lawyer refused to come (Bob doesn’t have any legal right to stop Michael and
Carolyn from using their decreed water right). Bob also wanted us all to go to
regulation so Michael and Carolyn would have to shut down their water use, but the
creek is not that short yet. We agreed to share our ditch water with Alfonzo
50-50 until we actually go into regulation (at which time we would have the
prior right) but the very next day Alfonozo took all our water again! I’m
afraid this is going to be another stressful summer on Withington Creek.
We had all the kids here for dinner Thursday evening when
they came home from their week with Mark. On Friday Dani and I rode Dottie and
Ed and checked the 320 pasture gates and the fence between us and range cattle.
I took photos of Dani on Ed as we were heading out to go up Baker Creek, and
again on the way home as we passed the colorful rock outcroppings on lower
Baker Creek.
Saturday Andrea started baling hay down below. We moved some
hay out of my hay shed and rearranged the rest so we could start stacking. Lynn
finished cutting heifer hill and field below it.
Sunday morning Michael and Carolyn brought their trailer
down and hauled our spare 3-year-old bull (Lightning Strike) and their yearling
bull up to the upper place to put the yearling with their heifers and young
cows and our big bull with their older cows. Then we sorted our herd and put
our 3-year-old bull (Thunderbull) with our cows and calves. We took them to the
little pasture above our house, and put our yearling bull with the yearling
heifers in the orchard. The grass in there has grown nicely and is about 2 ½
feet tall. It might hold them for a few days and then we’ll put that little
group in the horse pasture.
Michael came down that afternoon and showed Robbie how to
run our old stackwagon. They stacked 4 loads of hay in my shed. Meanwhile, Lynn
was trying to grease the swather before heading out to cut hay below the lane,
and discovered a serious problem that needed fixed. Bob Minor was going to
Idaho Falls the next day for sprinkler parts and picked up the bearings and
parts we needed, to fix the swather.
Range cows broke through Rocky’s fence on his little acreage
on the upper place, and were getting into his garden. Michael and Carolyn
helped get them out, and Rocky propped up the fence. Those cows are pressing
our fences all along that back side—for 3 miles—because they are hungry for
green grass. They need to be moved to their next pasture.
These past two days have been really hot. Andrea got most of
the hay baled on heifer hill and then the baler broke down just before she
finished. Robbie worked on it that night and got it working again, so yesterday
she finished baling that field and the little field below it. Dani and I rode
Ed and Dottie, so Dani could get a ride before she has to go back to her dad
for a week.
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