Ranch Diary: February 14 through March 14, 2016

FEBRUARY 23, 2016 – Last Tuesday Michael, Nick and Robbie worked on the fence project to replace the old falling-down fence along our lane. Michael used the backhoe to dig out the rest of the brush, chokecherry trees and old fence posts. Lynn went to town that afternoon for a doctor appointment to have his hip checked. The doctor wants him to have an MRI to try to figure out the problem.

The next day Andrea, Carolyn and Dani left early in the morning to drive to Pocatello for Dani’s appointment with Dr. Christensen, the psychologist who has been evaluating Charlie and his progress (working with Charlie’s high-functioning autism) over the years. The custody evaluator (in the court battle between Mark and Andrea) wanted Dani evaluated regarding her social adjustment and recent problems in school. Dani has been having a hard time dealing with the stress of the on-going custody battle, which has been going on for more than a year now, ever since Mark re-opened the custody case wanting to take the kids away from Andrea. This mess has been very hard on everyone emotionally, especially the children.

Robbie helped me feed the cows that morning, and then helped Michael and Nick work on the fence. They got the rest of the new posts set before lunch. Lynn got the other kids off the bus after school and I fed them all supper, since it was late evening before Andrea, Carolyn and Dani got back home from their trip.

It rained in the night and the next couple days were very windy. The weather was terrible on Thursday, with wind, rain and hail, and the guys decided not to work on the fence. Andrea took Dani to the doctor to have the staples removed from her head gash, which has now healed fairly well. This was the deep gash from the icicle falling on her head, out at her dad’s place a few weeks ago—an injury that was belatedly treated/stapled at the ER, the night Andrea got the kids back from Mark (and took Dani to the hospital), since Mark didn’t take the child to a doctor.

With all the rain, our snow is melting and flooding everywhere. Andrea and Robbie spent several hours shoveling and ditching the water that was washing out Andrea’s driveway. The storm abated a little by Friday and the guys worked on the new fence again, putting the net wire on it.

 

They got that project finished, and started sawing out the brush in Fozzy’s old pen by the creek, so we can refurbish the fence around it and move Sprout into that pen. It’s a lot bigger and she’ll have more room, and some trees for shade. We can then move Rishiam into Sprout’s pen and free up the pen where he’s been living for a year and a half. We need his pen again for calving.

On Saturday Lynn got a phone call from a guy who needed a well site located, so he drove out to that place, near the airport, to water witch. On his way down the creek, he saw one of Alfonzo’s cows stuck on her back, unable to get up. He was about to try to go find Alfonzo, then Alfonzo showed up with his horse to rope the cow and pull her upright again so she wouldn’t suffocate.

The next day Sam got up early and went to church with her cousin Heather. Andrea and Robbie helped me feed, then started the tractor and took more big bales around to various groups for their feeders, and reloaded the feed truck. The heifers were glad to have new hay in their feeder.

 

Michael and Carolyn drove their truck down for some more big bales of alfalfa, and brought us 2 more big bales of oat hay.

Yesterday the kids didn’t quite get ready for school in time and missed the bus so Andrea drove them clear to school while Robbie helped me feed the cows. I cooked a big lunch for my fence crew again. They burned the big pile of brush/trees they sawed out of the creek pen, and started re-establishing the hot wire around the old jack-fence. 

 

Sprout will need the hot wire to keep her from chewing on the wood fence. The fire was still smoldering that evening but it was down to ashes and coals, and it wasn’t windy, so we figured it was safe to leave it. By this morning the remains of the brush pile were all burned up.

It’s been cold the past few mornings, and down to 8 degrees again this morning. The guys finished restoring the old electric wire around the creek pen, and rehung the gate, and I fed them lunch again. Andrea helped me trim Rubbie and Veggie’s long feet. They hadn’t been trimmed since early winter and their toes were much too long. I took photos of their long feet before we started trimming.

In the afternoon Lynn drove to town for his MRI. The technicians were able to view both hips at once, so he didn’t have to make two trips through the machine. On his way home he picked up stays (for the new fence between our place and Alfonzo’s cattle) and also bought electric wire insulators for the refurbished creek pen. The guys finished that pen this afternoon, and hung a new gate in the driveway fence.

Then they rehung one of the gates in Sprout’s old pen so it would be higher off the ground and not be so difficult to open when there’s snow on the ground. 

MARCH 5 – Last week our second load of oat/barley hay arrived, and Michael unloaded the truck at the upper stackyard with his tractor. The muddy conditions made it difficult for the big truck to get back out of the stackyard but Michael was able to pull it partway and then push it the rest of the way out to the county road with his tractor.

 The next day we worked cows. Michael and Carolyn vaccinated theirs early in the morning, luring them into the corral with their feed truck. They were finally able to get Alfonzo’s wild heifer captured and loaded into their stock trailer. She came into their field last fall when Alfonzo and his friends were rounding up his cattle off the range, ramming and jamming them in a big mob through the upper road pasture, and pushed her through the fence into the neighboring range. She crawled through that fence to come in with Michael and Carolyn’s cattle because she didn’t want to be all by herself. A few days later Alfonzo came back up there with his horse and tried to get her out but she was too wild and he gave up. Michael and Carolyn told him they would bring her home the next time they had their cattle in the corral. She refused to cross the creek, however, after it iced over last fall, and stayed by herself on that side for a while even though the other cattle went back and forth.

She was wild and goofy and they simply let her live with their cattle all winter, eating hay. This was the first opportunity to capture her, on the day they put the whole herd into the corral to vaccinate the cows with their pre-calving shots. But knowing how wild Alfonzo’s heifer is, and realizing she would try to crash the fence or jump out, the first thing they did was herd her and another cow into the trailer. The old gentle cow led the heifer into the trailer and then turned around and came back out, enabling them to slam the door and contain the wild heifer. After they vaccinated their cows, they hauled the heifer home to Alfonzo’s place.

Meanwhile, we rounded up our two groups of cows at feeding time, luring them down to the corrals with the feed truck. Dani helped follow the herds in from the fields. We were ready to vaccinate them by the time Michael, Carolyn, Nick and young Heather finished with theirs and came down to help us. Dani helped Nick and Heather push the cattle through the chute and Nick gave her some pointers on where to position herself, to encourage a cow to move forward in the chute.

After vaccinating our two groups and letting them back out into their respective pastures, we lured the 17 yearlings in from their field, with a little hay in the sled, and brought them around to the corral. We vaccinated, deloused, and tagged the heifers, giving them their permanent brisket tag numbers, dehorned the two that had horns. Andrea took pictures of Michael tagging Panda Bear and dehorning her.

We took that group back to their field, and then vaccinated the two yearling bulls from the back corral. We got it all finished by lunch time and I fed everyone lunch.

Michael, Robbie and Nick put the stays in our new fence at the lower end of the heifer pasture—the property boundary fence between us and Willard Colston’s place. We told Willard in January that we were rebuilding it and that he would be responsible for his half of the expense. We recently sent him an itemized list of the cost, and a bill for his half. Idaho state law says that adjoining property owners share the labor/costs of their mutual boundary fence. Willard responded by saying he would not pay it because he didn’t think a new fence was necessary. We had told him earlier that the old fence (built in 1967) was no longer adequate; we’d patched in many times over the years but some of the old posts were rotted off. Then during the past 5 years of Alfonzo leasing Willard’s place, Alfonzo’s cattle pressed it very hard, reaching through it to eat grass on our side when they were short on feed, and one of his cows jumped over it. We had a bigger problem with Alfonzo leaving his bulls next to our heifer pasture, with risk of bulls coming through/over the fence to try to breed our heifers. A good neighbor does NOT put bulls next to someone else’s open heifers! For multiple reasons, it was time to build a new fence—with or without Willard’s blessing or participation.

For the past month and a half, Alfonzo has been feeding his cows (and bulls with them) next to our heifer pasture, and a few days ago when I was walking through our heifers I took a photo of him feeding right below our new fence. Even though we also put a hot wire along our side to keep our heifers farther away, we can now rest easier knowing that Alfonzo’s bulls can’t come through our new fence.

On Saturday Andrea and Robbie used the chain saw and brush nippers to cut off all the little stumps that were left in the new pen after cutting down the brush, to make sure nothing sharp would injure a horse’s foot. Then they put Sprout into that creek pen, and moved Rishiam into Sprout’s old pen. Now we have our extra “calving pen” available again. I took photos of Andrea leading Sprout around to show her the new pen, taking her down across the creek, and Breezy watching her new “neighbor”. Breezy is still doing well with one eye—wearing her protective face mask to shield her good eye from too much sun.

It snowed off and on that day, and we were glad we did all the cattle work the day before when it was sunny and nice.

 We had several days of snowstorms and colder weather again, then melting snow and mud. Andrea had to move some of the big bales (with the tractor) to a different area of the stackyard because they were in water, and had to do it early one morning while the mud was a little frozen, so she wouldn’t get the tractor stuck.

Michael, Nick and Robbie worked on a couple more fence projects, finishing up one end of our second-day pens near the calving barn, and tearing out the old falling down fence in the hold pen at the end of our running chute, in the corral—to rebuild it.

Then we had terrible wind and blizzard Tuesday night, with new snow. The wind blew some empty water tubs across the lane, blew hay (laid out for the horses’ morning feed) a hundred yard, ripped and blew the tarp off the heifer hay that was stacked below the lane. We had more floodwater coming down the draw behind Andrea’s house when the snow melted, so Andrea and Robbie spent several hours shoveling and diverting it.

 Michael has been really miserable these last few days with an abscessed wisdom tooth. It needs to be pulled, but the dentist put him on antibiotics for a week before it can be pulled. He took a couple days off from fencing because he’s been in such pain.

Our smallest yearling heifer, Raindrop, was lame with foot rot, so we brought her in and pushed her into the chute with one of her buddies, and gave her injections of antibiotics. She’s walking better today. Andrea took another new bale down to the heifer feeder.

The past 2 days we’ve been cleaning house and getting ready for guests. Pete and Bev Wiebe are driving home to Canada after spending part of winter in South Carolina with the Mennonite Disaster relief group, helping rebuild homes. They planned to come through here and spend a few days with us before continuing their trip home to British Columbia. Yesterday Sam and Dani helped Lynn and me clean house (and Andrea worked on cleaning her house), while the guys finished setting the posts and hanging the new gates that go across our driveway. I took photos of them – open and closed.

 

These replace the old wood panel and broken aluminum gate that we drug across the driveway to block it every time we moved cattle back and forth from the calving pen to the barn and from the maternity pen to the field below the lane. I fed the guys lunch but Michael was somewhat limited on what he could eat, with his tooth really bothering him.

Today we were finishing up the house cleaning, expecting Pete and Bev to arrive this afternoon. Then this morning we got an e-mail from them just as they were leaving Salt Lake City, to let us know they were sick with a bad flu bug and had decided to drive straight home and not risk bringing sickness to us.

We continued cleaning house however (getting rid of piles of old magazines and newspapers) and after chores this evening we went up to Andrea’s house. She had prepared a big lasagna dinner in expectation of having Pete and Bev and all of us, but instead we just had a nice dinner to celebrate our anniversary (this was the 50th anniversary for Lynn and me). It was a nice evening, enjoying family around us, reflecting back over the many years here on Withington Creek—through good times and adversities—grateful for our wonderful family. Andrea’s friend Anita had baked a special cake for us.

MARCH 14 – Last Sunday morning was warm, 38 degrees. The snow continued melting, without a freeze to slow down the thaw. When Andrea, Robbie and I fed the cows that morning there was water coming into the irrigation ditch from the big draw behind Andrea’s house, overflowing into the lane by the creek and starting to wash it out. We had a shovel in the feed truck and spend a few minutes diverting it, then after we fed the cows Andrea and Robbie walked down the ditch at the bottom of the field to divert the water to the creek so it wouldn’t wash out the ditch. By midday there was a lot of water running down the draws on the other side of the canyon and filling the ditches along the Gooch place. The water was coming on down into our ditch and flooding across heifer hill. There was so much water that if left unchecked would create a gully across our field. Andrea, kids and Robbie had gone to town for a friend’s birthday party and Lynn headed off to try to fight the flood. I called Nick, who came down and met him at heifer hill, to help him put in a dam and divert the water down to the creek so it wouldn’t wash across our field or come on down into the next field.

On Monday Michael, Nick and Robbie finished rebuilding the fence in the little crowd pen at the end of our running chute, setting the gate posts in concrete and hanging a metal gate there to replace the old broken wood panel. I took a photo of their completed project, and while I was over there at the corral I also took a photo of one of our bulls—Thunderbull (coming 3 year old, son of Old Freddy).

 

I cooked lunch for the fence crew. Andrea brought more big bales around for the heifers with the tractor and tried to smooth out the deep ruts in our driveway. The mud is bad this spring! That night it snowed again, and we’ve had a little rain off and on, so it will take a while to dry out the mud.

Michael, Nick and Robbie had planned to start a custom fence job near Baker the next day, but postponed due to bad weather and Michael’s painful tooth. He’s now on a stronger antibiotic to try to clear up the infection (he had an earache and fever). On Wednesday the dentist pulled it, but he’s still been very miserable and unable to eat—trying to subsist on a liquid diet and still work on the custom fencing job. He’s doing a little better by today.

Some of our cows are starting to show more udder; it will soon be time to bring them down from the field to the maternity pen. They are due to start calving the first of April. Yesterday evening Dani and Andrea walked up through the big group by Andrea’s house to look at them.

They all had supper at our house after Andrea got the kids back from Mark. I was finishing chores as they got here, and Sam and Dani helped me feed the heifers with the new cart that Robbie made. He bolted one of our hay sleds (the one with the metal bottom) to a little 4-wheeled cart. It’s a lot easier to pull than a sled, now that the snow has melted, and holds more than any of our wheelbarrows. Andrea took photos of the kids helping feed with the new “cart” and on our way back to the house I took photos of one of our old cats.

 

The old gray horses stayed fat this winter, thanks to the alfalfa hay, which was easy for them to eat, with their bad teeth. Now they are starting to shed their long winter hair. Yesterday I took photos of their scruffy look, with patches of long hair missing.

They have just about made it through another winter! Veggie is 30 this spring and Rubbie is 29. We hope they’ll have another good summer.

Ranch Diary: December 15, 2015 to January 18, 2016

DECEMBER 15 – We had several more inches of snow last week so the cows are on a full feed of hay. Michael brings his truck down every few days to load some of the big bales to take up to his cows. 

One of Alfonzo’s bulls was out on the road below our place; the neighbors who fed his cows the day before had left the gate open. Andrea and Lynn drove down on 4-wheelers and put the bull back into Alfonzo’s field before it came up to our place.

Michael, Carolyn and young Heather drove to Butte, Montana to do Christmas shopping and meet up with Heather’s friend Gregory driving down from Canada. This is his first trip to Idaho to meet the family and visit here for a few days. With the stormy weather and bad roads, they wanted to make sure he could make it over the pass between Montana and Idaho in his pickup. Later that week Carolyn cooked a nice dinner and we went up to their house and got to meet Gregory—a very nice young man!

Last Wednesday we fed our cows close to the gate into our heifer hill pasture, and sorted out the young cows (first and second calvers), putting them through the gate. Now we can feed them separately so they’ll get their share of the hay--and the older, bossier cows can’t hog so much of the feed. We can also give some of the better hay to the younger cows, since they are still growing as well as being pregnant. We are feeding them all some alfalfa, but we can save the best grass bales for the weaned heifers and the young cows.

That evening Lynn and I drove to town and attended the school Christmas concert. Sam and Charlie were playing in the concert band and also sang in the chorus.

 My boxes of books finally arrived (my latest book, Ranch Tales) so I packaged up a bunch of them to mail out to family and friends as Christmas gifts. If only I could write a book every year, then my “gift list” would be easy!

Andrea and Robbie took his pickup and went with Michael and Carolyn and kids (in their truck) up the creek to get firewood. The snow was really deep up there and they had to chain up both pickups, but were able to get into a good patch of dead trees (killed by the fire in 2003) and brought home two big loads of wood.

We’ve had a lot of snow and cold weather; the snow is getting quite deep. Andrea and Robbie helped Lynn take a couple of big grass bales up to the group of young cows—a good one for their feeder and an extra one (a spoiled top bale) to spread around for them to bed on, so they won’t have to lie in the deep snow.

The kids are now out of school for Christmas holiday, and got to spend the first few days (before Christmas) at home with Andrea this year. Dani helped feed the heifers a few times (so she could pet her favorite one -- Deerling) and made our calving calendar. She wrote all the cows’ names on the dates they are due to calve. She also enjoyed spending time with her favorite pets, including her cats.

Tuesday evening Dani and Sam went with Andrea and me to deliver gifts to a couple of our neighbors up the creek. We stayed awhile to visit with David and Rosina and their young children (the Amish family living in Gordon Binning’s smaller house). It was cold that night by the time we got home, nearly down to zero.

Wednesday Sam had another checkup, and another x-ray, and the doctor said her foot has finally healed enough that she no longer has to be on crutches! It’s been a long recovery; she’s been on crutches since July.

Robbie helped Lynn put the blade on our big tractor and Lynn plowed snow off Andrea’s driveway and ours; it was getting too deep to drive to her house, or to get up our driveway. Robbie spent a couple days taking the old straw out of our calving barn, loading it into a little trailer and pulling it out with the 4-wheeler. He took some into the adjacent field for the little heifers to bed on, and several trailer trips up to the field by Andrea’s house where the main group of cows are. With the deep snow they had to place to bed, so he spread the straw along the bottom edge of the field along the willows, out of the wind. They are appreciating their nice bedding area.

We have several cottontail rabbits living in the barnyard and one of them has taken up residence under by the parked machinery next to some of my horse pens. This rabbit likes to eat the alfalfa leaves that spill when we are loading our sleds to feed the heifers, and is very unafraid of people. Lynn’s cat (that also lives in the same area, by the tarped alfalfa bales for the heifers) has caught and eaten several cottontail rabbits this winter, but not this one. She likes to chase the rabbit, but so far these games of cat and rabbit haven’t wiped out this bunny.

 With the snow and cold weather the whitetail deer are coming in droves to eat the alfalfa. We have the haystacks wrapped with netting, and put tarps over the feed truck and the hay for the heifers, but they come boldly into the feed trail to eat with the cows and heifers. Even when we chase them away, they wait in the bushes until we leave, and come right back again. Some of them come through the house yard.

On Christmas Eve my brother Rocky and wife Bev and son Aaron stopped by on their way home; they are now finally in their new house up the creek; it is finished! Rocky had just been to a couple Christmas Eve events downtown, playing Santa. He’s perfect for the part, with his white beard and jolly smile. 

Yesterday (Christmas) we did chores early, fed the cows their alfalfa, then went up to Andrea’s house to watch the kids open their gifts.

That afternoon Michael came down for more hay and helped us take big bales around to fill the cows’ feeders again. Andrea took the kids to Mark that evening; he gets them for most of the rest of the Christmas vacation.

Today Andrea and Robbie helped feed, and break ice for the cows. With all the cold weather it’s been harder to keep their water holes open and we have to chop them open again every day. Michael came down late morning and we took the shoes off Shiloh, Sprout, Dottie and Ed.

Andrea and Robbie put up more electric wire around part of Willow’s pen to keep her from chewing up the fence posts and poles. That filly loves to chew on everything!

Tonight the temperature is dropping below zero. 

JANUARY 5 – Magrat’s young heifer Mallulamae was lame with foot rot last week, so Andrea and Robbie helped me treat her. We lured her and a couple other heifers into the 2nd day pens (by the barn) with a little hay, then put her in the headcatch by the barn and gave her injections of oxytetracycline. By the next day she was walking better, and by the 3rd day was no longer lame, and the swelling nearly gone.

Jim has been creating some lovely lamps and chandeliers in the old “rolling wreck” trailer house that he converted into a shop. Robbie helped him take out a wall, to make a bigger working space. Jim is making several lamps and pieces of antler art for some clients and also some extra ones to take to an art show in a few weeks, to sell. As a fun project he created a decorative “flower pot” and some huge “flowers” made of antlers and turquoise.

He’s also spoiling us, splitting wood and filling our wood-box every morning. With the cold weather we’ve been using both stoves and going through a lot of firewood.

Jim and Robbie repaired our two old runner sleds that needed some new boards. Our kids used them when they were little, and one of them dates back to when I was young. Those are still the best sleds because they steer. Andrea’s kids are now enjoying them; they can come down her driveway all the way to our barnyard. It makes a great sledding hill. They also enjoy having someone pull them back up the lane on their sleds, with a pickup or 4-wheeler so they don’t have to hike back up. With the new snow the other day they were having a snowball fight on their way back up to their house.

Rocky’s daughters Amber and Amanda made a fast trip up here from Boise to visit and see Rocky’s new house. They stopped briefly at our place early the next morning on their way home, to say hi and to see Andrea.

The deer have been jumping in with Veggie and eating his alfalfa hay at night. Andrea and Robbie screwed some small poles onto the fenceposts to make the fence taller, and strung more electric wires above the fence. We hope that will keep out the deer. Poor old Veggie is 30 years old now, and it takes him awhile to eat his hay; he picks at it all night long. If the deer eat it, he won’t get enough.

On New Years Eve Andrea got the kids back from Mark (for 1 day) so we had a potluck pizza dinner at our house when they got home. Andrea made a pizza and I made one and after dinner we all went up to her place to watch movies. We took our old VCR tapes of The Gods Must Be Crazy and The Gods Must Be Crazy II and Andrea made a big batch of popcorn. The kids hadn’t seen those old movies and we all enjoyed them. That’s the first time Lynn and I have stayed up until midnight on New Year’s Eve for many, many years! It was 8 below zero when we got home, and 11 below by morning.

In this cold weather the cats like to find warm spots, like our “fencing cat” on a favorite perch enjoying the sunshine’s warmth reflecting off the barn door.

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The water holes in the creek froze over and it took 30 minutes to chop out the ice and re-establish the water holes. Charlie and Dani enjoyed their “new” repaired runner sleds and coasted all the way down to the barnyard, and helped do chores that evening, then Andrea took them home before they got too cold. It dropped to 15 below that night. She had to take the kids back to Mark for the rest of the holiday.

The deer tore down the high hot wires around Veggie’s pen that night, so Andrea fixed it and strung more wire. I think we finally have them fenced out.

The young heifers ran out of grass hay in their feeder and it was too cold to start the tractor. It has to be plugged in overnight and even then it won’t start at this temperature so we don’t even try it. So we backed the feed truck up to the stack and four of us rolled a big bale onto the truck to take out to their field. We rolled it off the truck into their empty feeder. We give them alfalfa hay twice a day, but also keep grass hay in their feeder at all times, and they are doing very well on that program. The deer don’t bother to eat the grass hay; they just want the alfalfa! We select the best grass bales (not too coarse) for the heifers—and it sometimes has a little clover in it, too.

When the kids got home from Mark's, Andrea had a turkey dinner cooked and we all ate at her place. She hadn’t had a chance to have a Christmas dinner for the kids so this was our belated get-together for dinner. 

Andrea took bales around today to the various feeders. It’s hard for Lynn to get in and out of the tractor with his painful back and hip, so Andrea is doing more of the tractor work.

Today Michael and Nick rehung the gate below the old barn. Ever since we put rocks and gravel on that lane (to keep from getting stuck in the mud with the feed truck and haying equipment) the gate has been hard to open and close, dragging on the built-up ground. Michael and Nick were able to raise the gate up on the posts, moving the hinges, so it swings again.

Then Robbie helped them tear out the old fence between the calving pen and the orchard. We need to rebuild it before calving season. I locked the two little bulls in the horse pasture so they wouldn’t get out, and moved their water tub; I can take a hose through Dottie’s pen to water them. Michael rerouted the hot wire, putting it on tall poles above the fence they’ll be rebuilding. I fed them lunch. This afternoon, they built fires over each post hole they need to dig, to thaw the frozen ground, and put our half barrel “ovens” over the fires, to keep the fires contained through the night.

JANUARY 18 – Michael, Nick and Robbie set new posts and rebuilt the fence on the north and west side of the calving pen in front of the house and we put the little bulls (yearlings) back in the big pen next to it.

Then they started rebuilding the old falling-down side of our main corral. We moved the big bulls out of that corral to the back corral temporarily, and Michael used the backhoe to dig away the debris and snow along the fence they sawed out. There was so much stuff covering the ground in that area that it wasn’t frozen, and they were able to dig those post holes without using a fire overnight to thaw the ground. They set all of those posts except the two big gate posts; Michael had to buy some bigger posts and set those in concrete this past weekend. 

Andrea went to the doctor last week to have her shoulder checked; she’s torn something loose, and it’s very painful every time she chops ice or has to use that shoulder very much. If it’s not starting to do better in a couple weeks she will be referred to a specialist. The doctor prescribed physical therapy for her in the meantime, to try to help it. 

 Last week we had major snowstorms—10 inches of new snow in town, and not quite that much here. I took photos of the new snow on our new fence.

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Lynn plowed our driveway and Andrea’s again, and his hip is really bothering him now, after getting in and out of the tractor. It was hurting so badly during the night that he had to use crutches to go to the bathroom. Since then he’s been taking pain medication and has a doctor’s appointment tomorrow to have it checked. It doesn’t hurt much when he’s sitting down, but standing and walking can be very painful. We’ve been doing all the chores and letting him sit in the house and read his newspaper!

Since we started feeding the cows 2 weeks earlier than last year, and feeding grass hay in their feeders rather than straw, they’ve been going through the hay more quickly than we expected. We’ll have to buy some more hay or straw to make it last the winter. A nearby rancher offered us some baled cornstalks to try (and we’d buy some from him if the cows will eat it) but the 4 bales we put out for the cows—2 for our cows and 2 for Michael’s cows at his place—weren’t accepted very well by the cows. We’re looking for another alternative. The cows are enjoying the corn stalks for bedding but won’t eat them.

Robbie took the kids sledding last weekend, pulling them around on a big tractor tire inner tube with a snowmobile, in the deep snow on heifer hill. They had a lot of fun. The next day they went sledding with friends. 

 We had another stretch of sub-zero weather but Michael, Nick and Robbie kept working on our fences, hanging the gates in the calving pen, and starting on the big corral. Nick and Robbie kept working on it the two days that Michael had to haul a couple horses and a dog to the veterinarian at Challis (tooth issues on one horse, and a yearling colt to be gelded -- and to have cheat grass seeds removed from the old dog’s ears and sinus cavity).

Thursday evening we all went to town for Sam’s birthday party. She’s 13 now. The party was held at a pizza place and she invited about a dozen school friends.

Afterward she had a friend come home to spend the night with her, and then Sam spent the night at her friend’s house and they had fun making big snowballs and snow art.

The next day both Dani and Sam had their hair cut and styled, as sort of a birthday present for Sam and belated present for Dani.

Dani’s friend Sequoia stayed overnight with Dani, and both girls came down to help do chores and feed the cows the next morning. Rosalee, one of our older cows, had been lame with foot rot for a couple of days, so we brought the whole herd down from the field, sorted her out, put her down the chute, and gave her antibiotics. Andrea and Sequoia helped us herd the cows down to the corral, following the feed truck. They also came down that evening on the 4-wheeler to help us do chores, feeding the horses and heifers.