OCTOBER 4 – Last Sunday Andrea brought Christopher with her when she came down on her 2-wheeler, and she dumped the heifers’ water tank and rinsed and refilled it. Her washing machine quit working and Jim helped her take it out of her house; he hauled it and our old stove to the dump. That evening we called Bob Minor (in the hospital in Idaho Falls) to check on him and talked to him awhile. Lynn has been feeling a little better each day, getting over the worst of his COVID infection, but still has a cough.
Andrea sent me a photo of a couple young raccoons that were in the little trailer that night--where she feeds her cats. The raccoons come in regularly to eat the cat food, and they are fairly fearless.
 |
| young raccoons in the cat house |
The next day Andrea checked on the yearling heifers in the back field and went to change water on heifer hill and discovered she has NO water in any of her ditches. She hiked up the creek and found that Alfonso had dammed the creek off completely to send it all down his #10 ditch. Our irrigation season is about over, but it would be nice to keep watering some of the fields a little, while the afternoons are still warm enough for grass to grow. We desperately need rain but it’s been a very dry fall.
Over the next two days a little trickle of water came through from Alfonso’s waste water, so Andrea has been irrigating a little with that. She moved the 8 cows from the upper swamp pasture to the little ditch pasture below her house but left the gate open between the two areas in case there’s not any water in that ditch for them to drink.
We had extremely strong wind Wednesday night that blew several branches off the big elm tree in our yard; fortunately none came down through our roof.
On Thursday I went with Andrea to check on the yearling heifers and she took a photo of me with Zorrina licking my hand.
 |
| heifers in back field |
Jeff Minor brought his dad home from the hospital in Idaho Falls and got him situated at the Discovery care center. He’ll be there a while, and doing physical therapy to try to get stronger before he goes home. He is grateful that Emily works at Discovery; she can help take good care of him! He’s like another grandpa to Andrea’s kids; he and Jane took care of Emily a lot when she was little, and now it’s her turn to take care of him. She put a big poster board in his room with lots of photos from years gone by—that he enjoys looking at.
Andrea drove over to Vern England’s place to pick up our old stock trailer. Vern and his helper fixed the door hinges and welded up several weak and broken areas, and put a rubber bumper beneath the back door, to make it easier and better for backing up to the loading dock without a space for cattle to put a foot down through the gap. I took some photos of it when she brought it back, showing the repaired door hinges and how the little sliding door works a lot better now.
 |
| the sliding door slides better |
 |
| repaired door hinges |
Andrea parked it back up against the dock, and Lynn went outside for the first time in 10 days to hike around a little and look at the trailer repairs.
On Friday Andrea took Christopher to town to see the parade, and took a photo of Dani and Christopher at Burger King.
 |
| Dani & Christopher |
Andrea did all our town errands and got the mail after she took Christopher back to Emily at AJ’s house. When she got home she helped me trim Ed’s front feet. They were getting much too long and starting to split at the toe. We got them trimmed enough to remove the split and smoothed the toes to where they won’t be splitting again.
Tony the watermaster came by that evening to take all the locks off the headgates. Alfonso had already taken the locks of some of his and has been using water that technically was ours. The next day, Andrea had no water again; Alfonso dammed off the creek completely and also spent a lot of effort rechanneling some of his waste water from his ditch to make sure it wouldn’t come down into our ditch!
She goes to town every day to spend a little time with Bob Minor; he has a lot of pain issues and it helps when he has visitors to temporarily distract him from the pain. He’s been able to sit up and get around in his wheel chair, and she took him outside one nice afternoon. Here are photos when she had him outdoors, and of Charlie visiting with Bob in his room. We try to call him now and then but it’s hard to find a time when the portable phone isn’t busy at Discovery. To remedy that problem, Jeff got his dad a cell phone so that he can call people and they can call him, more conveniently.
 |
| Andrea & Bob |
 |
| Charlie & Bob |
On some of her trips to town, Andrea took clothes to wash at the laundromat, since we haven’t found a new washer for her yet. No one sells appliances anymore in Salmon; we’ll have to find something out of town.
Yesterday evening on her way to town to visit Bob she stopped here with a young kitten that had been without its mother for a couple days, and was feeding it kitten formula with an eye-dropper. She took it to town with her and it curled up by Bob on his bed and was quite content while they talked, and Bob was more comfortable than he’d been for a while; he really likes cats.
Today I found a few more old photos (of Bob and Jane with Andrea’s kids when they were young) for Andrea to add to some she is putting together to make another poster for Bob’s room. I had a bunch of photos that were originally put together to illustrate my book Beyond the Flames; A Family Touched by Fire, but were never used in the book. The final chapter—an epilogue written after that traumatic year when Andrea was fighting for survival in the burn ICU in Salt Lake---would have included those photos of Bob and Jane with those kids, so those photos were easy to find. All of those early photos can be viewed on my first blogs (archived on this website).
The whitetail deer that spend a lot of time in our back yard were in there again this afternoon and I took a photo of them through the window, and also a photo of a guy in a paraglider going over our place, scaring the deer and the horses.
 |
| deer in yard |
 |
| periglider |
This evening our granddaughter Heather in Canada called to tell us that their 2 ½ year old boy James had a broken elbow. On Sunday he was riding Heather’s gentle old horse Danny, led by Heather from another horse, and they were just stopped and standing still in the corral. The old horse shook himself and James tumbled off—on the far side where Heather couldn’t catch him to break his fall. He apparently landed on his elbow but he didn’t complain about pain and seemed ok. They didn’t realize he had a problem until that evening when it was swelling up. They thought it might be dislocated so they took him to their nearest town to a chiropractor but it needed to be x-rayed and there was no one with an x-ray machine in that town. So they took him the next day to a larger town farther away and the doctors were able to determine that it was broken and needed surgery, but sent them home again to come back the next day. They ended up making three trips to hospitals before the surgery was actually accomplished, and now James has a cast and wires in that joint to hold things in place as it heals.
He’s a stoic little boy and hasn’t complained about any pain, but is frustrated because he’s having trouble riding his tricycle with one arm in a cast! Heather and Gregory are trying to get the rest of their grain harvest finished and other tasks done, and James has been riding around with his grandpa John in the combine to keep him out of harm’s way. He loves riding in the tractors and combine; he can sit for hours watching the windrows behind the machine.
The exciting news is that they are planning to make a trip down here next week to finally have a chance to visit and we’ll get to meet those three great-grandsons we’ve never seen! We haven’t seen Heather and Gregory since their wedding here in 2016.
OCTOBER 9 – Last Wednesday Andrea helped me take the shoes off Dottie. Her feet were getting long and it was time to remove the shoes. We only got to ride a few times this summer (Andrea rode Willow 4 times and I rode Dottie 5 times) and Dottie was the only horse I put shoes on.
We didn’t take time to trim her feet after we took the shoes off; I had to do a phone interview. Andrea called the heifers from the back field and let them through the gate into the little “bunny basket” pen below the bull corral. The grass in that pen grew back quite a bit after grazing it earlier in the summer, and it would be enough for those 9 yearlings until we vaccinated on Saturday.
We started picking rocks in the main corral, so Dr. Cope’s van can be driven in there without danger of high-centering on a big rock. He’s confined to his wheelchair but Bart Stephanishen drives the van for him and has been taking him around to some of the ranches where he can still preg-check cows (reading the ultrasound screen while Bart runs the ultrasound probe in the cows). Andrea and I took a big piece of particle board and some smaller boards into the corral to put on the ground next to the chute, for Cope to situate his wheelchair on a level spot.
On Thursday Andrea visited Bob at Discovery, and was able to take him outside in a wheelchair again. Being out in the sunshine lifted his spirits tremendously! Two of our favorite people are ironically in the same condition (prostate cancer that spread to the spine and paralyzed their legs).
When Andrea got home that day she helped me trim Dottie’s feet, so she’s ready for winter. Willow, Sprout and Shiloh have been keeping their feet self-trimmed with their own exercise. She also sent me a photo of the new kittens at her house.
 |
| new kittens |
On Friday I lured the weaned calves in from the field below the lane, bringing them into the grassy pen next to Sprout’s pen. The two little bulls were slow to come so we were able to just leave them in the field and didn’t have to sort them. We needed just the heifers to Bangs vaccinate the next day; all the calves have had their other shots.
We put the heifers in the big pen below the calving barn, where they would be easy to move to the main corral on Saturday. We moved the 8 cows from the ditch pasture to the lower swamp pasture above the corrals, where they would be easy to capture for vaccinating and preg-checking.
Yesterday morning when I did chores I called those cows into the hold pen above the corral, where there’s some regrowth on the grass they grazed earlier. Andrea came down soon after and helped me put them in one of the corrals, and bring yearling heifers into another corral. Then we brought the heifer calves around from the calving barn area and put them in the grassy runway to the chute.
We had everything ready when Charlie got here, just before Cope and Bart arrived. Cope had expected to just sit in the van to read the ultrasound, but when he and Bart saw the nice level board we’d set by the chute, he was able to get out of the van and roll to it on his wheelchair, to be able to sit right by the chute. Another friend, June Playfair, came about that same time. She often helps when Cope goes out to various ranches. We Bangs vaccinated the heifer calves first, with June giving the vaccinations and Bart putting the tattoo and metal clip in their ears (with the date and serial number of the vaccine). I took photos as we got things set up for Cope..
 |
| setting things up to vaccinate heifer calves |
 |
| vaccinating & tagging heifers |
 |
| Bart tattooing and tagging heifer's ear |
 |
| June releasing the squeeze |
Andrea, Charlie and I put the heifers back to the field below the lane and started to get the yearling heifers into the chute. About that time Dani and her boyfriend Roger showed up to help, and they were good help moving the cattle through the chute.
Charlie ran the head-catch, Andrea took out the old fly tags, and I vaccinated. To use the ultrasound probe, Bart had to be behind the squeeze chute and Roger had to keep the next cow from coming up too close and bumping into him. Cope read the screen and was able to tell us the results. Here are photos of the cows being preg-checked.
 |
| preg-checking |
 |
| Cope reading ultrasound |
Luckily we’d monitored the cows and heifers closely enough to see the two heifers and one cow that were cycling (not pregnant) after we took the bull out in early July—and we sold them when we sold our steer calves. We wanted to check the rest of the cows and heifers, however, just to make sure we hadn’t missed any that were open. They all were pregnant so we won’t have to sell any more of them!
We put the cows back out to the swamp pasture and later put the heifers up on the ditch pasture above the horse pasture—after we vaccinated Babe. He didn’t want to go down the chute, however, and rather than fight with him and have a problem (since he’s now 4 years old and more headstrong) we got three heifers out of the pen where they were “on hold” and ran them down the chute with him, and he went willingly.
It was a nice sunny day, and it was great to have Cope out here again. He was so happy to be outside, and not just sitting in the van. He was right there at the chute like old times, with the cow shit and camaraderie, swapping tales with the crew. As he loaded up in the van again to leave, I thanked him for doing this, and he was just so happy to be able to do it. He said he’d promised his clients that he would continue to do what he can for them, for as long as he can, and he wants to keep that promise.
After we moved the heifers to their new pasture, I fed lunch to Roger, Dani, Andrea and her friend Russ (who came to spray paint the stock trailer welds and repaired areas so they won’t rust).
Today was another nice day, but windier. We let the heifers into the horse pasture and orchard where there’s probably a week’s worth of grazing. Charlie came out again, and Andrea gave him a haircut. He fixed Andrea’s taillight on her car, and also helped Jim load his wood-splitter into his trailer. Jim is going to Missoula tomorrow to pick up a washer and dryer he found for Andrea, and loaning the wood-splitter to his friends that live near Hamilton.
OCTOBER 14 – It’s been freezing every night but temperatures have been up to 60 and sometimes 70 degrees in the afternoons so we’ve had some really nice fall days. The leaves are starting to turn, and the trees along the creek are beautiful. We desperately need rain, but we’re enjoying the nice days. We still have a tiny bit of water in a couple of our ditches so Andrea has been changing it every few days, trying to keep some portions of the fields green for the cattle to graze later this fall.
Monday evening we talked with granddaughter Heather in Canada; they were still planning to come later this week to hopefully stay awhile with Michael and Carolyn and have a chance to visit us. Joseph was really excited about it and talked to us quite a bit about his desire to meet Christopher and to pet all the cats and hold a baby kitten.
Jim brought the washer and dryer (that we all helped purchase) home from Montana and on Tuesday he and Andrea got them into her house from his trailer. A.J. came by about that time and helped move them into their slot where the old ones were taken out, and get them installed and working. Andrea did several loads of laundry that day, to catch up!
Then she hiked up to the headgate on our #8 ditch and shut it off for winter. There wasn’t enough water coming through it anymore to irrigate with (Alfonso is using almost all the water upstream from there) and by shutting it off there would be a little bit more coming on down to our #7 ditch that needs to keep running a little to provide water for the yearling heifers in the ditch pasture and horse pasture.
After lunch Lynn went down to Baker to locate water for Gordon Stephenson on the little place on the highway corner where he keeps some of his cattle. Gordon doesn’t have enough water for those cattle in winter and was hoping to put in a well. Lynn hiked around on that little place for more than 2 hours and found several spots where there’s water, but it’s at least 160 feet deep. Gordon was hoping for a shallower well, since the cost of drilling a well has increased dramatically in the past year. Well drillers used to charge about $90 per foot but now it’s more like $116 per foot. Lynn was really exhausted by the time he came home; he hasn’t been out and about much yet after being sick with COVID and spending that much time on his feet really wore him out.
The next day he mostly rested and I cleaned house a little, in preparation for having our Canadian family come to visit. I did a couple loads of washing, and that took a bit of effort because our old washing machine decided to have more problems.
A couple years ago the cold water intake quit working, but I resolved that by using a hose to add cold water, since we have a handy indoor screw-on faucet in that back room. I simply use a timer to make sure I don’t run it too long and overflow it. But that day I discovered that the hot water intake no longer worked, either! I had to carry buckets of hot water from the bathroom. At least that didn’t require as much effort as trying to pack ALL the water, since I only need a little hot water for the first cycle; the hose for the cold water takes care of part of that cycle and provides all the water for the two rinses afterward.
But the next problem was finding out the darn thing now leaks when it spins. I was mopping up the floor after every spin cycle. Thus it took a little longer than usual to do the laundry, and clean up the floor. Fortunately I only need to wash clothes (for Lynn and me) about once every 3 weeks. I can probably get by with this old machine for a while longer and then hopefully we can afford a new one.
Yesterday I got up early and typed an interview and cleaned house a little more before daylight. I called Michael and Carolyn before I went out to do chores, to see if Heather and Gregory and kids had made it here from Canada. They did try to come the day before, but when they got to the border, Gregory was not allowed to come through, because he hasn’t been vaccinated for COVID. They had to turn around and go home again. So Heather and the 3 boys were going to come by themselves; Michael and Carolyn were getting ready to drive to the border (in Montana) to meet them and convoy back with Heather and kids. What a disappointment!
Andrea and Dani took breakfast (hot biscuits and gravy—his favorite kind of breakfast) to Bob Minor at Discovery. Lynn drove to town after lunch; this was the first time he’s gone to town since he got sick. He wanted to visit Bob at Discovery. Andrea had to go back to town that afternoon also, to her pain doctor appointment (for injections in her neck and back) and she and Dani also went to visit Bob again. Jane was there and she took him outside in his wheelchair, and they all sat outside in the sun for a couple hours and had a really good visit.
This morning I called Michael and Carolyn to see if they made it home safely last night with Heather and kids; they got home at 1:30 a.m. It was a long, slow trip! I went and did chores, typed another interview, and did some last-minute house cleaning. Michael and Carolyn had to go to Missoula with their truck and trailer today to get more fencing materials, so Heather and kids came down here after lunch. It was great to see her again, and finally meet our 3 great-grandsons! Joseph was excited, James (2 ½ years old) was more timid, and 8-month-old Ian was happy as long as his mama was nearby.
It was a nice afternoon so we showed the boys around the barnyard. They looked at one of our old tractors, and checked out the alleyway toward the calving barn where one of our cats escaped from them into the ditch beyond the fence.
 |
| old tractor |
 |
| looking for the cat |
 |
| Joseph looking at the creek |
 |
| throwing rocks in the creek |
At one point Heather had to take James back to their vehicle to change his messy diaper, and Andrea went with her to hold baby Ian. While they were gone, Joseph put rocks in our plastic sled to haul them closer to the creek so he could throw them in.
 |
| Andrea holding Ian |
 |
| throwin rocks |
 |
| gathering more rocks in the sled |
Then they went up to Andrea’s house to see her cats, and pet the baby kittens. Emily and Dani brought Christopher out from town (Andrea will be keeping Christopher for about a week while Emily and AJ go hunting) so Christopher got to meet his 2nd cousins and they had a lot of fun together. After they played awhile at her house, Andrea took Joseph and Christopher down to the creek by heifer hill, where they had fun throwing rocks in the water and putting sticks in the creek as “boats”.
They stopped here again just as I finished chores, to visit with Lynn and me a bit more. By the time they went back up to Michael and Carolyn’s house, those kids were exhausted and so were we, but will be fun to have them here for a week. Heather wants to drive to Arco tomorrow to see her other grandma, but we’ll have a chance to visit with her and the boys several more times before they have to drive back to Canada next weekend.
No comments:
Post a Comment