JULY 5 – We finished haying earlier this year, with fewer breakdowns than most years. While we were getting our hay baled, Phil Moulton brought us several trailer loads of big square bales (we bought 70 tons from him) and stacked it in our stackyard across the creek. We started baling with the mid-size John Deere tractor, since the big tractor was being used by Phil to unload and stack the hay he brought us.
We moved the cows to the field above the house and grazed it in two segments, making them clean up the first half (including the tall grass they tromped down) before we let them into the second half. We took their salt up there (and tire rim salt holder, to keep the salt up out of any irrigation water) and I took a photo of one of the young cows licking salt.
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| cow licking salt |
Andrea did most of the baling, and also showed Stan how to run the baler and he enjoyed baling some of the fields. Dani and her friend Jake helped for several days, rowing bales (rolling some off the steeper hills and some up out of the wet places) to make it easier for the stackwagon to pick them up. We stacked part of the hay in my hay shed and the rest in the stackyard. We put a new pole on the back of my hay shed to reinforce the spot where we nearly broke one pole last year, pressing the hay too hard against it. The middle Johnny tractor started a serious hydraulic leak when Andrea brought it down from heifer hill so we put the baler on the big tractor instead, and finished bailing the rest of the fields with it.
We started balling the field by Andrea’s house and discovered that Alfonso was flooding the top end of the field with water from his ditch, so we had to divert the water and get those bales off as soon as we could. Some bales were too wet to stack, however, and we had to spread them out in a couple places next to our horse pens and cut them open and spread them out so the hay could dry and not mold.
On one trip through the corrals Lynn ran the stackwagon into the upper corral gate and we had to pull the gate post back into proper position with another tractor. Andrea was trying to finish baling the field by her house so we could get all the hay off and stacked before any more of the bales got wet, but had a flat tire on the baler. We were able to rob a tire off one of the old balers that has been parked in the bushes for several years (an old one we’ve robbed parts from before, to try to keep the other baler going). Stan was able to change the tire, and we finished baling that field before dark.
We had a week of 90-plus degree weather which made it miserable for haying (with tractor cabs that have no air conditioning) but it was good drying conditions for the hay and we got it all done without any rain on it. Jake and Stan helped me put black plastic over the stacks of big bales that we got from Phil.
Lynn managed to get the hay stacked, even though the old stackwagon is difficult to operate and sometimes the tip tables don’t work right. Stan helped him get it working a few times and rearranged the odd bales on the stackwagon. Andrea took photos while gathering the bales off the fields, picking them up with the stackwagon, and Dani and her friend Jake rowing up some of the bales for Lynn to pick up. Christopher was with them, too, enjoying the fun.
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| stackwagon loading hay |
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| everybody helping! |
Our old stackwagon tires are wearing out and we were hoping they wouldn’t blow out while we were hauling hay. It’s such an old model that the tire dealer no longer carries those tires, but was able to order some from an outfit in Oregon. Our old tires held up, however, and Stan changed the tires after we got done haying.
The 120-year old crab apple tree above my hay shed keeps overgrowing the gate to the field, so Stan trimmed it back quite a bit before we brought the haystacker through that gate, and also trimmed the chokecherry trees that were overgrowing our fence below the lane. Dani and Jake hauled several loads of branches away, on the flatbed feed truck.
The last two days of hauling hay it was up to 96 degrees. Lynn tried hauling one load in the evening after sundown but he was tired and that load fell down. Stan, Andrea, Dani and Jake restacked it by hand. Andrea got a photo of that load before it fell down!
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| starting to unload the hay against the stack |
Some of the bales were broken, and I gathered them up the next morning on the feed truck and hauled them around to the bull pen were we made a pile and put a tarp over it, to feed the bull later this fall when we take him out of the cow herd. We finished hauling the last of the hay that morning, then Andrea and Stan put a tarp over it. What a relief to be done haying! Dani and Jake helped me gather up the rest of the broken bales. We put them over by the horse pens and put tarps over them.
Meanwhile, Andrea and Emily took Christopher to the hospital early last Tuesday morning for dental surgery to repair his broken front teeth. He’s had several crashes and broke off his top teeth, but the dentist was able to salvage and reconstruct them.
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| Christopher preparing for dental surgery |
On Thursday we put a tarp over the finished stack of little bales in the stackyard, and put a piece of black plastic over the tiny stack of old hay where the old tarp ripped off in the wind.
A couple of Millers young cows came down off the middle range, through the low range, and were pacing up and down the fence along the road for several days, trying to get to the fields, and some water. There’s hardly any grass left on the low range and the water sources have dried up. They managed to get through the fence and into Alfonso’s field and that evening he chased them out and put them back on the range.
On Friday Andrea, Stan and Christopher went to see the parade in town, and later went out to the Fairgrounds to watch a rodeo.
That evening one of Millers cows managed to get through the fence again and this time came down our driveway instead of going into Alfonso’s field. I happened to see her when I was taking Sprout back to her pen, just before dark. I have been letting Sprout graze for a couple hours in the morning and again in the evening, to clean up the grass and weeds in the barnyard. I managed to stop the cow before she got clear down the driveway—before she had a chance to go up into my haystack or try to get in with our cows—and shut our driveway gates. Then she paced back and forth along the horse road, trying to get through that fence to get in with our cows.
We had to leave our driveway gates shut for several days, to make sure we didn’t have any strays coming in. Both of those cows got back into Alfonso’s fields and he chased them out of his lower place—where they spent time in another neighbor’s garden, and eventually got chased on down the road and toward their own home.
Andrea took Christopher to town with her a few days ago and spent a little time with him at the city park where he had fun going down the slide and also found the only puddle in the whole area, and jumped into it with his good shoes in, to see how much it would splash.
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| Christopher on slide |
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| puddle jumper |
We’ve had several lightning storms but not much rain. Lightning started a fire a few miles from us, just below K Mountain. Helicopters were dropping water on it for a couple of days.
Stan put the new tires on the stackwagon, so it will be more ready to go next year without risk of the old ones coming apart. Emily and Dani hauled one of the 4-wheelers to town for the balloon bash at the Fairgrounds—part of the 4th of July weekend celebration events. They competed with a couple other teams (one person drives and the other tries to bash the other team’s balloons) and had a great time. Afterward Andrea took a photo of Em, Dani, and Christopher with Mark (Dani’s dad) and friend June
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| after the Balloon Bash |
Yesterday after Andrea got her irrigation water changed, we rode Shiloh and Dottie for 3 hours to check the 320 fences. We discovered that a lot of Millers and Alfonso’s cows are already in the high range—more than a month early—so their cows are pressing our fences on two sides now. One of Alfonso’s cows was in our place, grazing near the upper water trough in Baker Creek. We were able to get her out, mainly because her calf was not with her and she was willing to go back out to find her calf. We patched the fence that she’d pushed through, and took her up Baker Creek to join a little group of cows farther up—and her calf was with those cows. It looks like the cow had been going in and out of our place daily to graze, going back to her calf periodically.
We checked the rest of the fence on that side, from Baker Creek up the hill to the fence corner next to the high range and middle range, and saw that the brace was completely falling apart (someone had loosened the staples and taken the wires off so they could ride through it). Andrea patched it up, tying the wires back together and making it look like a fence again.
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| Andrea putting the brace wires back on |
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| putting the brace back together |
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| tying the wires up and propping the fence |
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| Andrea putting the fence back together |
We came home through the middle range, checking that side of our fence more closely, but there were no places needing major repairs. We saw Millers’ crippled bull again, but this time he was on the low range. Apparently John had tried to take him home and that’s as far as he got. The poor bull can barely walk.
Then we hurried home so Andrea could take care of Christopher while Emily went to work. It was fitting that we were riding that day, in celebration of still being able to ride together to do cattle work. It was 21 years ago on the 4th of July that Andrea and I were riding our good old cow-horses gathering 5 pairs off the range to bring home (our 5 cows that had bull calves we were keeping as future bulls). It was a wild and challenging ride, to find and get that little group together and bring those cattle home because they didn’t want to come down off the range. But we got the job done, thanks to our very agile horses with good endurance. That was the last time I was able to ride range with my daughter for several years, because the next day (July 5, 2000) she had her burn accident that nearly took her life, and she spent the rest of that summer in the burn ICU and then in physical therapy and bandage changing on her skin grafts. It was a long road back, but she was determined to regain as much physical ability as possible, and she did. I rejoice that I still have my daughter and we are still able to ride range together!
Yesterday afternoon we moved the cows to new pasture, and that evening Andrea, Stan, Dani and Christopher went to a friend’s house for a picnic and fireworks.
Today was hot again. Lynn helped me put up a hot wire for the cows, then we tended Christopher here while Emily went to work and Stan and Andrea took her little jeep for a drive. They didn’t get very far, however; a rock went through the radiator. Dani took Andrea’s pickup to go rescue them and they pulled the poor little jeep home.
JULY 17 – Last week Stan took more fencing materials to the 320 on his 4-wheeler, to Baker Creek, and carried them up the hill to work on the fallen-down braces. He set new posts and rebuilt the braces, doing it in two stints. It was a challenging job in the hot weather, but the braces turned out well, for his first attempt at this kind of project. Andrea helped him the first day, and they came home mid-day to take a couple more posts up there. Here are photos of the finished rebuilt braces.
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| rebuilt corner braces |
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| rebuilt brace in fence |
That afternoon we had a brief rain with a lot of wind and lightning, but not enough moisture to help our parched dry hills and pastures.
One of our yearling heifers (Panda’s daughter, named Pandemonium) is suckling her big sister, T.W. (a second-calf cow that’s Dani’s favorite cow). The cow tries to kick the heifer off or chase her away, but the heifer is smart and persistent, and nurses while T.W’s own calf is nursing. The heifer sucks from behind, where the cow can’t kick her. The calf was being shortchanged on dinner every day by this big moocher, so we brought Pandemonium in from the field and put her by herself in the corral and I’m feeding her hay. We will probably butcher or sell her this fall, since we may not want to gamble on keeping her. She might try to continue this bad habit.
Andrea remembered that this heifer was a robber last year, as a calf. Even though her mom (Panda) gave plenty of milk, this heifer suckled some of the first-calf cows, too. Andrea had photos of her suckling T.W. along with that year’s calf, and here they are.
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| two calves nursing TW |
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| Pandemonium sneaking a meal from her big sister |
Last week I put shoes on Ed, in case we need to ride her this summer. Even though she’s old and a bit stiff, she’s a better cow-horse than Shiloh, and if we got into a situation where we needed to deal with neighbor’s wild cows or get more of them out of the 320, it would be good to have Ed functional and able to go chase cows.
That Friday, Andrea had more neck injections (in the joints) from her pain doctor, and they seem to help a bit.
On Saturday I helped her re-establish the hot wire to divide the pasture below the lane. We mashed down the tall grass that had grown up along the fence lines, so it won’t short out the fence. The next day we moved the cows to the top end of that pasture.
Steve Adams, our water master, came out this evening to show the new young water master (Tony) where the ditches are. He is training the new guy to take over as water master. Andrea took Christopher for a ride on her 4-wheeler and they went down to Baker to visit one of the neighbors.
On Monday Stan worked on the middle-size tractor that has the hydraulic oil leak and took off the cylinder that’s leaking. We can send it to a repair shop in Idaho Falls to be fixed. Andrea and I rode for 3 hours to check the 320 fences, etc. This was her first ride on Willow this year, and that mare did pretty well in spite of having so much time off (not ridden since last fall). I took photos as we went up the ridge and on up through Baker Creek
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| First ride for Willow this summer |
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| heading up Baker Creek |
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| heading toward range fence |
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| out through the timber to check the fence |
Then we hurried home so Andrea could take care of Christopher while Emily went to work. Andrea took him for a ride on the 4-wheeler up the creek took him up the creek, where he played in the water and had a lot of fun.
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| Christopher in the creek |
Lynn went to locate water for someone who is buying property on 4th of July Creek, and we had a very late lunch when he got home at 4:30 p.m.
On Tuesday we had a near tragedy. Late that afternoon Dani and some of her friends drove up the creek in her little pickup. They were up in the Forest Service rangeland--almost to the where the road splits—to go on up to the old Harmony Mine and the switchback from the left fork that goes to Mulkey Creek--when her pickup suddenly wasn’t running right, and she stopped. Then they all saw smoke coming out from under it. They got out, and there was fire on the underside.
They tried to put it out with some pop, and Jake tried to throw dirt on it, but they had no water and no fire extinguisher and they soon realized they couldn’t control it; the pickup was on fire. Transmission fluid had leaked down on the hot exhaust pipe and caught fire. They quickly grabbed a few of their things out of the pickup and got away from it. A couple of them started hiking up the hill to try to get cell service to call for help (and took a photo on their phone of the vehicle on fire).
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| Dani's truck on fire |
But there is no cell service in that canyon, so the two boys ran down the creek to try to get help. Dani and Kendall were thankfully well away from the pickup when the gas tank blew up—and started a fire in the grass around it. The explosion was so loud that my brother Rocky heard it, two miles downstream, at his house.
Alfonso and some other riders had been taking some of their range cattle back up the creek (the ones that had come down off the mountain and down into Alfonso’s pasture just above Rocky’s house) and left a horse trailer parked below the cattle guard, and Jake stopped there to see if he could find the riders, but they’d already gone too far up the right fork and weren’t in sight. Austin, the other boy, kept running on down the creek to the little cabin above Rocky’s place.
There was no one home at John’s cabin, so he ran on down to Rocky’s house. Fortunately Rocky was home, because the Amish neighbors (at Binnings old place) were not, and it would have been another 2 miles to a phone. Rocky just happened to be outside working in his yard, and had his phone in his pocket, so they called 911 and the fire department. Rocky drove up the creek in his jeep to get the other kids and Austin stayed at Rocky’s place to show the fire department and first responder crews where to go. The first we knew of all this was when a county fire engine (the one stationed at 17-mile was the first to arrive, since it was closer than Salmon) and several vehicles went roaring up the creek, past our house.
Multiple vehicles and several fire trucks (including BLM and Forest Service crews) went up the creek a bit later, and Rocky brought the kids down here—and they told us what happened. Dani was extremely emotionally upset and having a panic attack, and Jake was trying to soothe and calm her. Andrea and Stan came within a few minutes after we called them, and got the kids that were here and went up to see what was happening with the fire and try to find Dani’s bag with her wallet in it; she’d grabbed it out of the pickup but left it along the road when they hurried down out of there. Andrea took a photo of one of the firefighters at the scene.
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| Firefighters at the scene |
The ambulance was up there also, and the EMT’s checked all the kids to make sure they were ok. Dani was having such a breathing problem that the EMTs thought she was going into shock and put her on oxygen. They insisted on taking her to the hospital, so Andrea and Stan went in, too. After keeping Dani there a few hours and giving her some breathing treatments and medication they let her come home.
Some of her stuff and some of her friends’ things were still in the pickup when it blew up, and she felt badly about that, but we’re just thankful that they all got out of the vehicle and that none of those kids was hurt or killed—and that her pickup didn’t blow up on the highway somewhere or in town, where more people might have been hurt.
The exploding gas tank set the surrounding grass on fire, and started a fire in some trees next to the road on the creek side, but the fire departments and emergency crews got up there very quickly and worked on the fire, and had it under control within a few hours. Andrea took photos as the crews were getting the fire under control.
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| crews working on the fire |
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| getting the fire under control |
A helicopter with a bucket dipped water out of the pond across from Michael and Carolyn’s house and made 9 trips to dump on the fire. The helicopter scared their horses pretty badly –their mare and foal and another horse were in the corrals right there by their house. The horses panicked and tried to jump out of their pens, but thankfully only suffered some dings and scratches.
The fire burned about 2 acres before they got it under control and a crew stayed with it through the night to make sure it didn’t get going again. The good thing was that it happened before the kids got up into the timber, or it wouldn’t have been so easy to control. The grass fire on the hillside only travelled as far as the switchback; that road acted as a firebreak on that side. The most risk was from the tree that caught fire, and the crews and helicopter water dumps were able to contain it before it got into very many other trees on that side.
Slightly less exciting that evening was when Jeff and Jill Minor (Jake’s grandparents) drove in our driveway to pick up Kendall (who stayed here when Andrea and Stan took Dani and Jake back up the creek to try to retrieve her wallet and a few other things they’d left along the road when they fled the fire). A huge rattlesnake was lying in the driveway by our back door. Jeff saw it, grabbed a shovel, and killed it as it started heading into the back yard.
The kids stayed at Andrea’s house that night; Dani was grateful for their moral support, as she was still pretty shook up. The next excitement was a pack rat that got into Andrea’s basement that night through a window that was partly open. It took several people to chase it down and grab it.
After realizing how beneficial it was to have the pond for emergency water supply for a fire, we gave up a day of irrigating on our place to have our allotment of water put into Michael’s ditch that comes around the hill to Dr. Myers’ place to refill the pond.
We loaned our old white car to Dani to drive until she can replace her pickup. “Luna” is the little Lumina Chevrolet we bought 2nd hand the summer we needed something more dependable for Lynn’s many trips to Salt Lake when Andrea was in the burn ICU (and Emily was 2½ years old and staying here at the ranch with me). During that trip, young Emily named the car Luna.
Thursday night we had lightning storms but no rain, and several more fires started around the area—on Kirtley Creek, Bohannon Creek, Panther Creek, and one right above us just over the rim of the mountain behind the Harmony Mine. We are immersed in smoke, and the weather continues hot and dry. Yesterday Andrea and I were going to ride to check the 320 but there were too many other things we needed to do.
Today Stan fixed the wheel on the swamp pasture gate on Andrea’s driveway so that it can be opened and closed easier, and helped Lynn rehang the dragging gate to the field above my hay shed.
Andrea and I rode Willow and Dottie to check the 320 and I took a few photos as we rode up Baker Creek. The hot dry weather is taking a toll; there is very little water in the creek where we cross it.
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| riding toward Baker Creek |
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| crossing Baker Creek |
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| riding through the sawed-up tree logs |
There were a few range cows hanging down against our top gate in Baker Creek, including the cow of Alfonso’s that had been getting in before we fixed the fence. We moved them up Baker Creek to where there was some water, and found that Alfonso and Millers had gathered most of their cows that had been in the high range (for almost a month, too early) and put them back on the middle range, but there is hardly any grass left in either pasture. They’d left one cow on the high range without her calf, however. They were bawling at each other through the fence, so we let the cow get back to her calf.
When we got home, Emily dropped off Christopher at our house on her way to work, and he had fun “helping” us put our horses away, picking them some grass to eat, and carrying Dottie’s halter back to the house for me.
We got an e-mail from granddaughter Heather in Canada and she sent photos of James helping Gregory drive their pickup, and young Joseph hugging his favorite foal.
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| James driving |
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| Joseph hugging foal |
We’ve been short of water for irrigation. Even though the watermaster put part of our allotted water right in the ditch that comes down to the field by Andrea’s house, only half or less ever got down to our field. Andrea had to continually go up the ditch and shut off the taps on parts of Alfonso’s fields that mysteriously got opened.
Last Saturday one of my old college classmates and one of her friends stopped by to visit. She’s written a book about various places in Idaho (and had me do a short piece in it for our area) and wanted me to see a copy, now that it is published. She and her friend were also interested in having a copy of my book Beyond the Flames; A Family Touched by Fire (about Andrea’s burn injuries 21 years ago, and how that affected our family). Later that afternoon Charlie came out and we had a good visit with him.
The next day, Andrea and I made a fast ride on Willow and Dottie to check the 320, to make sure no hungry range cows had gotten in. We hurried back, to get home in time to see Emily, Dani and Christopher before they left on their trip to Fox Island. Em took a week off from work for this trip—something she and Dani have been planning for several months.
Fox Island is a special place for our family; it’s where my mom and her siblings grew up, in a cabin my grandfather built, before he died at a young age (when my mom was only 6 years old). Here is an old photo of that cabin, that Lynn took when he and I spent a few days there in 1967 (sort of a belated honeymoon, a little more than a year after we were married—since our “honeymoon” after our wedding was to go home to his rented dairy farm in Gooding, Idaho and milk the cows).
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| old cabin on Fox Island in 1967 |
That Fox Island property next to the beach, and the cabin—which was later replaced by a newer building by my mom’s sister and brother-in-law) is graciously made available to family members (to stay there by reservation) by my cousins and their kids, who continue to maintain it. Andrea, Lynn and I took all of Andrea’s kids to Fox Island in 2007 for the 100-year celebration of that property (my mom’s parents bought it in 1907 and built the original cabin, back when there were less than 60 homes on that island—and now there are several hundred). The 100-year celebration was also a family reunion and a birthday celebration for my Aunt Marjorie (mom’s older sister, who was 97 at that time).
To attend that reunion, Andrea drove us there in her car and we stayed several days, spending nights with relatives in the Seattle/Tacoma area. The kids all had a great time, catching crabs on the beach, wading in the water, going out in the rowboat with their second cousins. Emily (at age 8) and Charlie (almost 5) were old enough to remember the trip, but Sam and Dani were still very young. Dani was only 2 so Fox Island was just a memory of something other family members talked about.
Emily had a chance to go there again when she went with Andrea to Tenino (just across the bay) for the funeral of the wife of my cousin Ned. Emily loved Fox Island so much that she went back again after she was older, so this was her 4th trip. For Dani, however, this was a new adventure, to actually experience the special place that was only in her memory as stories told about that early visit when she was just a toddler—about the age that Christopher is now.
After they left on their trip, Andrea and Stan took a scenic drive in the mountains, and Lynn and I had a phone call from Gregory and Heather in Canada. They are having severe drought there on their farm, and are short of water for their cattle in several pastures. They’ve been hauling water many miles to some of their cows. She sent a photo of their cows drinking from a trough after they hauled water.
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| cows drinking hauled water |
They tried to dig another collection pond (dugout) where historically there was a little bit of water underground, and used a backhoe and then an excavator to go down quite a ways, but ended up with just a big dry hole. Gregory wants some advice from Lynn on water witching, to try to find a spot for a possible well. Lynn gave him tips on how to use welding rods and willows to locate the water, and how to use a long, thin willow as a “bobber” to count with and determine the depth. Along with all the advice and tips, we had a great visit with Gregory and with our granddaughter Heather. We hope that someday we’ll get to meet their two little boys (Joseph is 4, and James is 1½ years old).
Monday was horribly smoky from all the fires around us. The cows were running short of grass in the field below the lane, and it was time to move them to the lower swamp pasture (which has regrown since we grazed it earlier this summer). We brought the cows up through the second day pens by the barn, and noticed that the bull was a little lame on one hind foot. It looked like the beginning of foot rot, with a little swelling around the hoof. So when we took them up through the corral to go to the swamp pasture we put him in the chute and gave him antibiotics to treat the foot rot, then let him go with the cows to the new pasture.
Meanwhile, we’d brought the three cull cows and their calves (the ones we didn’t put with the bull because we knew we were going to sell them this fall) in from the upper swamp pasture and had them in a side corral. After we went through with the cows, we took them around to the pasture the cows came from. There’s enough grass left there (including some that the cows tromped down) to last about 10 days for those three pairs.
That afternoon Gregory called us again and was ecstatic. He wanted us to know that his efforts at finding water were successful. He found three spots that might work for a well, and had test holes drilled—and sure enough, there was water. One spot was very promising, with a wide seam of water that was only 76 feet underground, and rose up the test hole to within about 13 feet of the surface—which will work perfectly for the kind of shallow well they want to put in for stock water. The thing Gregory was most excited about however, was that his estimation of depth, using the bobbing willow, was within 6 inches of the actual depth of the water they hit! The well driller will be coming in about a week to do the well.
On Tuesday Andrea and I rode nearly 4 hours, checking the 320 fences and making a loop through the high range and down through Basco and High Camp and down through the middle range. Here are photos taken as we headed over the ridge toward Basco and down through the timber.
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| going over the ridge into Basco |
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| down through the timber |
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| down through the timber above Basco Trough |
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| down through timber below High Camp Trough |
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| looking around at barren range |
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| drinking at Green Trough |
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| cows on barren range at Crawley bedground |
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| skinny cow at bedground |
When we got home we rearranged the hot wire in the pasture below the lane and put a water trough below the gate so we can water those 3 cows and their calves with my hose and the trough, since there’s no more irrigation water running through that pasture for them to drink.
Our parts came for the tractor, so the next day Stan put it back together. Lynn used the big tractor and loader to lift up the front end of the smaller tractor. They got it fixed, and it works fine. Andrea went back to the dentist to have the crown put on her tooth that had the root canal and temporary cap. It’s a relief to have that abscess finally resolved and the tooth salvaged.
Sam has been getting ready to go to the College of Southern Idaho in Twin Falls, to continue her nursing courses and get her RN degree. Thursday she and Andrea spent most of the day together cleaning out her old room, sorting through her things here—some that she wants to take, and some that they took to Rags and Wags to be given away.
The new watermaster came out to make the changes we requested on our ditches (putting our allotted water in 2 different ditches and shutting off the ones we’d been using) and we got to meet him. He seems like a nice young man.
Emily, Dani and Christopher had a great time at Fox Island. The neighbors had a 6 year old girl that enjoyed playing with Christopher on the beach and sharing some of her toys. They went out on a float, found seashells and starfish, and had a lot of fun. Here are pictures of the kids on the float.
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| kids enjoying the float |
Emily also took photos of Christopher’s first encounter with a starfish.
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| Christopher examining starfish |
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| what is this thing? |
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| Emily's bouquet |
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| view from space needle |
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| lights across the bay |
They had the family cabin rented for just 4 nights, so on Friday they cleaned it up and washed the sheets, to leave it all in good shape for the next family visitors, and headed home early that afternoon. We were hoping they would make it home ok, since the clutch in Emily’s little car wasn’t working right (with all the stop/go traffic in the cities) and the heat was terrible (109 degrees for most of that afternoon). But everything kept working and they drove through the night, making it home at 1:30 a.m.
They didn’t have much time to sleep, however, because they wanted to go out to Mark’s place before 8 a.m. to say good-by to Sam before she left that morning for college. They took Christopher with them and had a good visit with Sam, then stayed and visited with Mark and Charlie after Sam left. Charlie got out some toys for him, and Mark let him ride the lawnmower with him. Everyone enjoys that exuberant little boy!
That morning Stan worked on the fence at the end of our driveway (the one at the end of the ditch pasture that Alfonso burned up this spring when he was burning his end of ditch that comes out there from our place). Andrea took photos of him working on the fence.
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| Stan's fence rebuilding project |
Alfonso told us he would fix the fence he burned up, but he didn’t fix it, and we had to put some temporary panels across that stretch in order to graze our heifers there. Stan set some new posts and is rebuilding the fence. We couldn’t wait for Alfonso to rebuild it because he never will.
Andrea and I sorted Babe (the bull) out of the cow herd and put him in the corral with the jailbird heifer (Pandemonium, the one who was sucking one of the cows and had to be locked up). The bull recovered from the foot rot, but it was time to take him out of the cows. We don’t want a long calving season next year. If one or two cows didn’t get bred in a short breeding season, we prefer to sell them rather than calve really late.
Then we let the cow herd into new grass--a small segment of pasture above the swamp pasture gate, but left them access to the swamp pasture because there’s still a couple days’ worth of feed left in it.
Granddaughter Heather sent us a photo of their smashed, bent baler that ran into a big rock when Gregory was trying to bale some of their hay. It took him most of the next morning to take everything apart and straighten it out and then put it back together.
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| baler pickup smashed by rock |
Andrea brought Christopher down here late afternoon and we took care of him while she helped Stan for a while on the fence project. After Christopher eagerly ran around our livingroom finding all the toys he hadn’t seen for a week, I took him with me to do chores; we’d had a tiny bit of rain that cleared the air and it wasn’t very smoky.
He enjoyed running around to see all the horses, and helped me feed each one, stuffing a little hay through the fence for them. The only problem was when he tried to stuff some hay through the fence for Shiloh and accidently touched the electric wire on her side before I could get to him to redirect his enthusiastic effort to a better spot to put the hay through. It shocked his arm and he cried—and I had to console him for a few moments. But then he forgot about his traumatic experience when he got to help spray Shiloh’s hay (to settle the dust so she won’t cough), and help take Sprout around to the barnyard where I’ve been letting her graze down the tall grass and weeds.
Andrea had come back from helping Stan by then and she put Christopher on Sprout to have a short ride as I led her out to the driveway. Then Christopher helped me lead her the rest of the way, holding onto the end of the rope as he walked between Andrea and me as we took the horse around to where she could graze. He helped us feed the bull and heifer in the back corral, then wanted to climb up and get in all the tractors when we came back to the house. That kid loves tractors, and when he looks through old farm magazines he looks at all the tractor pictures and points them out to us. Tractor was one of his first words.
On Sunday Stan worked on the fence again. He got the barbed wire on it and got it finished except for putting stays in. Andrea and I sorted the 4 heifers out of the cow herd and put them on the ditch bank pasture above the orchard and horse pasture. Andrea brought Christopher down on the 4-wheeler and then went home just before a major thunderstorm that poured rain for a few minutes. This was the first real rain we’ve had for many weeks. Another big storm hit a few hours later and altogether we probably got an inch of rain, which will really help our parched, dry hills and help stretch our scanty irrigation water.
Yesterday Stan finished the fence (put in the stays) and we took photos of it.
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| finished fence |
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| Andrea's sign |
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| our driveway sign |
One of the calves in the pasture below the lane got through the hot wire (probably when it was so wet during the night and not working very well) and went into the field that’s growing back after being cut for hay. Andrea and I had to take down the hot wire in one place in order to get her back through it because by then it was working again and she was reluctant to touch it.
We had another hard rain late yesterday afternoon, so altogether it was nearly equal to an irrigation on the fields that haven’t had much water. The air was so moist this morning that there was ground fog at daylight, and I took photos of it out the window.
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| ground fog - looking from our window |
Today Lynn and Stan were figuring out how to reinforce the door latches on our stock trailer so they can’t ever come open while hauling a load of cattle. Ever since our neighbor’s trailer door came open while hauling some of our calves down the creek road (the fall of 1997), dumping a bunch of steers on the road (fatally crippling 4 of them, that had to be shot and butchered, and injuring several more that could not be sold until later, after they recovered) we have been very fussy about making sure trailer doors can be latched securely!
Then this afternoon Stan got a call to go out on a fire in central Montana (American Fork fire), to bring his wash station trailer to a fire camp. So he spent the rest of the day getting everything ready to go, so he can leave first thing tomorrow morning.
I always enjoying reading about ranch life. Thank you for posting. And, your picture of the cabin is one I hadn't seen before. Do you have any more picture stashed away somewhere. (Some of us are too young to have ever seen it in person.)
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