Ranch Diary: July 12 through August 24, 2015

Still trying to catch up this blog after our busy summer!

JULY 24 – Lynn was weak and wobbly for a few days after he came back from the hospital in Missoula, so Michael drove the stack-wagon and put some of our hay into my hay shed. Last week Andrea, Dani and I rode to check the 320 fences and make sure no range cows have gotten in. Dani was wearing her new cowboy hat and I took a photo of her as we went up through the timber, and we also saw a young doe resting in the shade.

 The range cows are short on feed in that corner of the range next to our 320-acre pasture, and have been pressing our fence pretty hard, so we try to keep checking our fences.
That evening Andrea, Robbie and Dani hauled several pickup loads of loose hay off the field above the house—the windrows that were too big and damp to bale the evening that the baler broke. They put it in the “sick barn” shed and we can use it later for hay or as bedding for the calving barn. Here’s a photo of Dani riding on top of one of the loads of hay, coming in from the field.

Last Tuesday young Heather started working with Willow again (the 3-year-old Morgan filly that will eventually be Dani’s horse). She did a little ground work with her then got on and rode her briefly around in her pen. The next day she rode her around in the field above the house—the first time she’s ever been ridden outside her pen. Last year when she did some initial rides it was all in her big pen. Dani is eager to have Willow trained so that someday she can ride that filly. She likes to lead and brush her.

Later that day Andrea and Dani and Sammy rode with me and we gathered up 7 range cows and 9 calves that have been hanging on our lower fence on the back side, trying to get into the field. These were cattle that got missed when our range neighbors moved their cattle to the next pasture. We took those cows several miles and put them into another range pasture where they would have more feed and water. Sam and Dani did a great job on Breezy and Ed helping move those cattle.

 On Thursday young Heather took Willow on a longer ride, out onto the low range, and I went along with her on Ed as a “baby sitter” horse. Willow did very well. She has been riding her nearly every day since, and I’ve been going along with her on Dottie. Willow is coming along nicely in training. Here’s are photos of Willow on her third and fifth rides.

 So far she hasn’t needed shoes; she has very tough, hard feet. I simply smooth the edges with a rasp after every ride (partly for foot handling training and partly to keep them from chipping and splitting as she travels through all the rocks on our rides).

Last Thursday Robbie helped Andrea irrigate (she’s doing it all now, since it’s hard for Lynn to do it). Then they baled the hay on Heifer Hill, and Lynn stacked it that evening. On Sunday Lynn cut our last field, and we were able to get it baled on Tuesday. Lynn stacked it that evening, so now we are done haying! We put tarps on the portion that sticks out from under my hay shed, and plan to tarp the other hay (for the cows) in our stackyard across the creek. Here’s a photo of my winter hay supply, tucked in my hay shed, with tarps over the portion sticking out.

 We’ve had more water problems, with Alfonzo taking more than his share from our shared ditches, and we also discovered that he’s been using two illegal ditches (with no headgates) on the place below us, and the ranch below that (with the 1st water right) was short of water. The water master called the Idaho Department of Water Resources for advice on how to deal with these problems.

Yesterday evening the kids got back home from their week with Mark and were very glad to be home. We all had supper here and then Sam and Dani helped me lead Rubbie and Veggie to a new pasture to graze.

I’ve been letting those old horses graze various pens and areas around the barnyard to “mow” the grass. They are so honest about fences that we can put up baling twine “fake” electric fences to partition off certain areas for them to graze.

This morning Heather and I made a short ride on Willow and Dottie (Willow’s 9th ride out in the hills).

Then Andrea and the girls came down to our place and we made a fast ride up to the 320 and back to check fences and make sure no cattle had gotten into that pasture. Sam and Dani enjoyed the chance to ride Breezy and Ed again, and especially enjoyed trotting nearly all the way home down the ridges.

 Emily took her final test and passed it, and now has her GED, finishing school a year ahead of her classmates. We’re proud of her for having a full-time job this year and going ahead with her schooling to finish her high school education.

AUGUST 14 – Two and a half weeks ago we actually had a good rain—rather than a quick lightning storm. It rained off and on all day, and we got about an inch of moisture to help our irrigation and dry spots in our fields and pastures. Between showers Andrea and Dani helped us move the cows to a new pasture but it started raining again as we finished, and we all got drenched.

One cow was quite lame, possible straining a hip while walking through a deep bog in the pasture they came out of. We held her and her calf back when we went through the corrals, and put her in the back pen where she won’t have to walk very much. We gave her an injection of dexamethasone to decrease the inflammation and pain and she started walking better. A few days ago we put her back out with the herd.

Dani rode with Andrea and me on a long ride to check fences and gates, and make sure the range cows hadn’t gotten in. They’ve eaten all the grass in lower Baker Creek and next to our fence. Since most of the troughs on the middle range didn’t get repaired this year (Alfonzo and the Amish family didn’t maintain them like we used to do when we ran cattle out there), the cattle congregated in the few area with water, and overgrazed those areas. I took a photo of the contrast showing the grass on our side of the fence, and the grass on the range where the cattle overused it.

 It was a cold day, threatening rain, so Andrea rode Sprout instead of young Willow, because that filly has never been ridden in the rain. We all dressed warm and it was a good ride.

Two weeks ago Andrea and Carolyn went to Idaho Falls for Andrea’s doctor appointments; her pain doctor put multiple cortisone shots into her back and neck. Sam and Dani rode with me for nearly 5 hours. We checked the 320-acre pasture (no cows had gotten in yet) and we let the horses drink at the one trough that was actually working. Then we made a loop up through the high range and ate our lunch near the Basco trough, coming home through the middle range.

 The next day Heather and I made a loop through the low range on Willow and Dottie—Willow’s 12th ride out in the hills. Willow is doing nicely, crossing Baker creek (the little stream that’s almost dry this time of year), and going up and down the mountainsides. We also keep seeing lots of cottontail rabbits along the Baker Grove (a large patch of trees and brush along one portion of the creek. Here are photos of Willow crossing the little creek, and watching a rabbit hopping into the brush.   

 The next morning Heather left early to drive to Saskatchewan to visit her friend Gregory for 2 weeks and attend his youngest sister’s wedding. Andrea and I rode Sprout and Dottie for 4 hours and checked fences—and tied a bunch of sagebrush across the path down through the big rocks on the northwest side of the 320 where there’s no fence. We used to have a lot of brush piled in there to keep the range cattle from coming down through those big rocks, but it’s all been taken out. Eventually we’ll carry some poles up there to make a real barrier, but for now the sagebrush will create an obstacle.

The next day Andrea rode Willow for the first time and we made a big loop around the low range. She’s now ridden Willow 8 times (20 rides total for Willow during the past few weeks) and the filly is coming along very well.

 Andrea and Robbie set some steel posts and put up a hot wire along the lower end of the field by Andrea’s house—the portion we didn’t cut for hay—and we let the cows graze that for a few days. Then last Monday Michael and Carolyn got worried that their bull wasn’t breeding; several cows that should have settled earlier have come back into heat. So we loaned them our spare bull (that we’ve had in the corral) and they hauled their bull to the auction sale in Montana.

Lynn’ favorite cat likes to lounge around on the back porch waiting for him to come outside, and this morning she was napping on the new Bar-BQ that Lynn won as a door prize at the auto parts store. Maybe she was waiting for us to cook her dinner!

 The kids got back home from their dad’s house last Thursday and again were glad to be home. Sam hurt her ankle on the trampoline at her dad’s place the previous Friday night and it hurt so badly that she was sure she’d sprained or broken it, but Mark would not take her to the doctor to have it checked. His live-in girlfriend thought Sam was just being a wimp and wouldn’t let her wrap it—and told her to just grin and bear it and walk on it. It was still swollen and painful when they came home Thursday night. Sam had sent numerous text messages to Andrea telling about the painful ankle, but Andrea couldn’t do anything about it because Mark won’t let her have any contact with the kids when they are at his house. So Andrea made an appointment for Sam to see a doctor the morning after the kids got home.

Andrea and Robbie had to leave early that the morning to drive to Bozeman, Montana, to pick up a new trumpet for Sam that a college student was selling at a reasonable price, so Lynn took Sam to the doctor. The ankle was x-rayed and the doctor thought there was a hairline fracture in one of the growth plates, and said she should not have been walking on it at all—and was appalled that Mark had not brought Sam in to have it checked soon after the accident. She put the ankle in a brace and Sam is on crutches until another checkup. It continues to be swollen and painful.

 On Friday I rode with Michael and Carolyn to the 320 to check fences. Michael rode a young mare he got this spring. She has some problems and a bad history (and an unusual “ear tooth” that had to be removed so she could tolerate a bridle) and was given to Michael, but she also has a lot of potential to be a good horse. He was pleased at how she did after she finally settled down.

She handles nicely on the ground, but turns into a bomb about to explode when you get on her. She was apparently raced or barrel raced as a filly and thinks that she needs to go fast with a rider and won’t stand still. But after we rode to the top of the 320 in a very short time, she was tired enough to settle down and realize that she didn’t need to rush everywhere. She even stood still for Michael to get off, reset the saddle and tighten the cinch (with Carolyn on Gus, nearby) before coming back down the mountain. She did nicely on the way home.

 On Saturday, with all the hot weather we’ve had, the creek has dropped more and there isn’t enough to service all the water rights. The upper place had to be shut off, and then a few days later part of the 3rd right on the old Gooch place. With water this short we have to carefully monitor the flows and the water master is checking to make sure Alfonzo isn’t taking more than his allotted amount.

We moved the cows to a new pasture and took the bull out. He can live in the corral with a couple heifers to keep him company (so he won’t try to jump out) until Michael and Carolyn no longer need our other bull—and then both of those bulls can spend the rest of the fall and winter together in the corral.

Alfonzo and the Amish moved their cows to the high range, but neglected to fix some of the water troughs (just like they didn’t fix all the troughs on the middle range pasture) and their cows are short on water. Some will have to go over the mountain into Withington Creek to get water. We took photos of some non-working troughs, and some of the thirsty cows trying to drink from a couple of troughs where the springboxes are plugged up and the pipes are just trickling—with not enough water for the cattle.
   

 These past few days Michael and Nick built a new fence (net wire topped with a pole) to divide Rubbie and Veggie’s old pen. We will use one side for Rubbie and Veg and put our new horse in the other side. Shiloh is an Arab-Morgan mare that young Heather trained for her college professor in Helena 5 years ago, and kept her here one summer on the ranch getting her conditioned for an endurance ride. Now her professor is giving her to Heather, but she doesn’t have enough use for the mare and is giving Shiloh to us—so we’ll have a spare horse when all the kids want to ride.
    

My next book, Cow Tales—More True Stories from an Idaho Ranch, was recently published and can be ordered from the publisher or any book seller. I am also selling autographed copies ($25 per book plus $4 postage). If anyone wants an autographed copy of Cow Tales, or my book Horse Tales, they can contact me at 208-756-2841 or P.O. Box 215, Salmon, ID 83457, or by e-mail at hsmiththomas@centurytel.net.

Ranch Diary: June 20 through July 12, 2015

I apologize for the long time between updates; it’s been a difficult summer!

JUNE 28 - This past weekend Michael and Nick got all the posts set in the 160 pasture boundary fence (our neighbor John Miller augered the holes) and put up most of the rails. Then John brought a load of poles and Michael and Nick finished that stretch of fence on Saturday. They also made a jack fence across the creek. Now that end of the fence is secure enough that when Michael puts his cattle back in our 160 pasture he won’t have to worry that the neighbor’s bull will come through the fence.
   

Last Sunday we had our vet come out and look at Cub Cake’s calf; his leg had been healing fairly well but we thought it might have had a setback from all his activity. Dr. Cope checked it and said it was pretty solid and didn’t need a typical splint, but he helped us put some padding and wrap around it for a little more support.
 

Robbie helped Lynn get the tractors, swather and baler ready for haying. He also set steel posts in the old fence between our swamp pasture and hayfield above our house. The cows were short on grass in the hill pasture so Andrea and I moved them down to the swamp pasture. That grass lasted until we moved them to the field near the house this past Saturday and put the bull with them. We left our spare bull in the corral and put Buffalo Girl and her calf (Gilbert) with him for company so he won’t try to jump out.

Young Heather got back from Canada and is busy training horses again. The local newspaper did a feature story about her new book in last week’s paper. She signed copies for Dani, Sam, Charlie (all 3 of them were in the cover photos) and Emily (who took the photos). Dani is on the front cover with one of Heather’s horses, and Sam and Charlie are on the back cover—sitting on the horse as Heather holds the horse.
   

 Lynn and I went up to visit Michael and Carolyn last week and looked at Carolyn’s foal Clarice. She has really grown!  She had surgery last month to straighten her front legs. This involved periosteal stripping on the right leg, to encourage one side of the bone to grow faster. The left one was more crooked, so the vet did a procedure called transphyseal bridging—using screws to bridge the growth plate and halt the growth on one side, allowing the other side to catch up. Her legs have straightened a lot and it was almost time to take the screws out so the correction won’t go too far. She and her mom have been in a very small pen since the surgery, so she won’t exercise too much. I took some photos of the sassy filly, and her knees.
   

   

A few days later Michael and Carolyn hauled the mare and foal back to the vet in Challis (60 miles away) to have the screws taken out. They also took along a couple other horses that needed dental work.

This seems to be the year for leg problems in youngsters. Magnicate’s big steer is lame, with a swollen hock. We’re not sure what happened to it.

We took the padded wrap off Cub Cake’s calf (Cinnamon Bear) after he got it all wet wading in the spring water in the back corral. Since the leg seems solid now, we put that pair out with the rest of the herd. He still walks with a limp, but puts weight on it and runs around like the other calves, so we’re hoping it will eventually be ok.

On Wednesday Andrea and I rode Sprout and Dottie up to the 320 and checked on Michael and Carolyn’s herd. They are doing well and the calves are growing nicely. The curious heifers came up to Sprout to sniff her.

On our way home we rode down through the 160-acre pasture and took photos of my brother’s new house—as the carpenters were hoisting the trusses into place with a big crane.

On Thursday Andrea and I made a fast ride up Baker Creek and through the 320 again, then hurried home in time for me to do phone interviews for a couple of articles I was writing. That evening she picked up the kids from Mark (she’ll have them for a week) and they all had supper at our house. After supper Sam enjoyed playing the piano and Dani went out with me to look at the cows and calves.

The next day Sam and Dani rode with Andrea and me to the 320 to check cows, and Dani got off her horse to get close and personal with the yearling heifers she helped feed all winter. She was able to walk up to her favorite one and pet her.

It’s been hot lately, up to 100 degrees in town. It’s not quite that hot up here at the ranch, but we try to ride in the mornings before the worst of the heat. This past weekend my brother held a ham radio field day up at his place, for people interested in learning about short wave radio. Charlie spent most of Saturday and Sunday up there, and thoroughly enjoyed it. Charlie wants to get his radio operators license.

Today Emily rode with Andrea, Dani and me—the first time she’s ridden with us this year. She rode Sprout and enjoyed getting out in the hills again. We rode out over the low range and then up into the middle range.

The creek is dropping, in the hot weather. This evening Jack (the rancher at the mouth of our creek) was short on water at his weir so we adjusted the flow on a couple ditches up here, to make sure he has enough for his water right. It may be a dry summer!

JULY 12 – Lynn went with Andrea and Charlie to Pocatello last Wednesday for Charlie’s appointment with a specialist for evaluation and an update on his progress socially and at school. Charlie is high-functioning autistic and doing very well.

Sammy and Dani and I rode that day and then for part of the ride did a short fun session on the low range pasture, trotting around the dry ponds, where we could do circles and figure 8’s and play follow the leader on horseback.

 Michael and Nick came down from their place to get some of our old electric fencing tape to recycle, and used it to fence off part of their field on the upper place that’s next to Binnings. The Amish family living there (helping take care of the place for Gordon Binning) has two horses and for awhile they had a hot wire keeping their horses away from the fence. Then they took it down and their horses were right through the fence from Michael’s horses. His big paint gelding, Captain cut his foot badly, striking at the horses through the fence. So Michael and Nick put up a hot wire partway down the field on their side, to keep their horses away from the fence.

The next day we had more water problems with Alfonzo taking more than his share from our ditch. Lynn spent so much time on water issues that he didn’t start cutting hay as he’d planned.

Andrea took Sam to eye doctor that day and discovered that she needs glasses. She’s now wearing glasses and it makes her look a bit older—and quite a lot like my cousin Diane at that age.

A young deer has been jumping into the front yard to nibble the weeds and rosebriars in the lawn that we haven’t mowed. The other day as I was typing I caught some movement out of the corner of my eye and looked around—and he was looking in the window! I slowly moved to the shelf where I keep my camera, then crept to the window, trying not to startle him—and took a few photos through the window.

Lynn finally started cutting hay, and cut the field below lane and the lower field across the creek on Friday. Andrea and I rode the next day to check the 320 hill pasture and make sure range cows hadn’t broken in.

On Sunday Lynn cut more hay. Andrea and Robbie helped me get the last of the hay out of my hay shed and stack it by the horse pens, with a tarp over it, so we can stack the new hay in the shed. Then we got the baler hooked up, and Andrea started baling until a thunderstorm hit. When they got out of the tractor and slammed the door shut, the handle door handle broke (and essentially won’t open!) then she and Lynn got soaked hiking home from the field.

The next day was hot and windy but the hay was still wet from the rain, and too wet to bale. That afternoon Andrea got the official results from Charlie’s psychological evaluation. He’s made some improvements in his social skills and adjustment and his testing showed that he is reading at 12th grade level even though he’s only starting 8th grade this fall.

I trimmed Willow’s front feet; they are getting too long and we need to start riding her again—and don’t want her stumbling because of long toes.  Granddaughter Heather started her training last fall, saddling her and doing groundwork—as shown in this old photo.

Now that Willow is 3 years old it’s time to continue her training. 

Lynn fixed the tractor door handle so the door will open again. Andrea and Robbie put the turner rake on the little tractor. On Tuesday Lynn started turning hay so it could finish drying, then baled all afternoon and finished that back field while Andrea turned hay on the field below lane. We got it baled just ahead of another thunderstorm.

The power was off all day Wednesday. I worked on a bunch of things that needed caught up, rather than writing articles with my computer. Lynn started hauling hay. Andrea and Robbie picked up few wet bales with the pickup (the bales that were too wet to stack) and opened them up by the corral (so they won’t heat and mold) to feed to the bull in the corral. Later that day we discovered that Alfonzo stole our water again, from the ditch that comes down by Andrea’s house.

Thursday morning Lynn woke up at 3 a.m. and thought he had diarrhea, but it was straight blood.  He passed another bowel movement at 6 a.m. that was nothing but blood, so Andrea and I drove him to the ER at 7 a.m. The doctor put him on IV fluid. While we were there at the hospital, Lynn passed a lot of blood a couple more times. The ER doctor decided to send him by life flight to St. Patrick’s Hospital in Missoula, Montana, so they loaded him into an ambulance to go to the airport.

The plane arrived in Missoula at 11 a.m. and he was taken by ambulance to St. Patrick’s hospital.  The doctors there kept him on IVs throughout the day, and thought they might have to give him a blood transfusion because he kept passing more blood, but the bleeding finally slowed. They gave him medicated fluid to “clean out” his digestive tract so they could do a colonoscopy the next day and try to locate the problem.
 
Meanwhile, here at home, Andrea turned and baled hay, until another brief rainstorm. Alfonzo turned out ditch off again, so Andrea and Carolyn took photos of it and turned it back on. Robbie borrowed a car trailer from Bob Minor and used it to gather the rest of the wet bales from the field below the lane. It was a lot easier to put those big heavy bales on that low trailer than up into a pickup. He took them over by the bull corral to use there (rather than stack them and risk heating and a haystack fire). He and Andrea put the good hay in my hay shed. Andrea tried to finish baling the field above the house, but the hay was heavy and the baler broke.

Lynn’s bleeding stopped early Friday morning and the doctor in Missoula was able to do a colonoscopy. He removed one polyp and didn’t find any tumors. The doctor couldn’t find the source of the bleeding but suspected it came from one of the many pockets of diverticulosis in the colon. It probably bleed more severely and for a longer time than usual, due to the anti-inflammatory medication Lynn has been taking for his back and hip pain. He’ll stop taking that medication now.

Andrea and Robbie worked on the baler to try to get it fixed, and Sam and Dani helped me move our cows to a new pasture. We rinsed out their water trough and moved it, too, and then moved the two old horses (Rubbie and Veggie) to another pen to graze. At age 28 and 29 they are enjoying their summer on green grass.

Alfonzo is trying to cut hay on the place below us and got stuck with his swather. So he hiked up through our place and yelled at Robbie who was working on the baler - trying to blame us for “flooding” his hay. But Lynn told him several days earlier that certain areas in that field tend to stay wet from sub water, and that when we leased that place (for 40 years) there were some places we simply couldn’t cut. Lynn also explained to Alfonzo how to divert some of the water down a drain ditch, but Alfonzo didn’t listen. He just wants us to quit irrigating our field!

Yesterday morning Alfonzo came by our house to tell Lynn to turn off our ditch and I told Alfonzo that Lynn was in the hospital in Missoula and that we were not going to turn off our ditch. 

Andrea, Michael and Robbie worked on the baler to get it fixed, then Andrea and the girls drove over to Missoula that afternoon to get Lynn from the hospital and bring him home. Robbie helped Michael and young Heather haul some hay from a ranch near town, for her horses.

Andrea, Lynn and the girls got home late last night and Lynn was very weak and tired, and went to bed. On her way home from our house, Andrea noticed that there was no water in the ditch by her house, so she hiked up the ditch to check it and found that two of our ditches had been completely shut off! So this morning we called the sheriff. Michael and Carolyn and Andrea checked the ditches and someone had not only shut the headgate on one of them but also packed mud around it. They took photos of it, and of the boot tracks. The Sheriff’s deputy wrote up a citation to deliver to Alfonzo.

Ranch Diary - May 11 through June 21, 2015

MAY 21 – We had rain last week; the weather has been cold and wet. The field above the house where the cows and calves were living was muddy for quite awhile and Buffalo Girl’s calf got foot rot. We brought her and Gilbert, in from the field last Wednesday and gave him antibiotics to treat his swollen hind foot. Dani helps with the cows and calves every chance she gets, and likes to walk among them to keep them gentle.

Andrea and Robbie have been helping Lynn change irrigation water and clean out more ditches. There’s plenty of water right now in the creek from snowmelt on the mountain, but our neighbor above us still tries to use everything in the two ditches that we share! Several times we’ve had to walk up the ditches and readjust his dams to get our share of the water again. We need to get our fields well irrigated this spring before the creek gets too low in mid-summer.

The cows were hungry for green grass, and tired of hay. We kept them on hay in the little field above the house until we had pasture tall enough to put them on. There’s a good net-wire fence around that little field but they were reaching under it as far as they could, to eat the taller grass outside the fence, and Mary Mary Quite Contrary’s calf Spotrick got through the fence last Saturday.  I put him back through a hole the cows had made, and laced up the hole with baling twine.

So the next day (Sunday) we moved the cows and calves to the lower end of the swamp pasture above the corrals. They are glad to be out on grass and we are glad to not be feeding hay!  We didn’t quite run out of hay. We’re still feeding the 10 heifers some alfalfa hay (along with their pasture) until we can get them vaccinated, tagged, and put out with the cows.

Lynn used our tractor and blade to scrape the silt off Andrea’s upper driveway—from the runoff in March that flooded down along her road.  

Michael and Nick finished a fencing project that afternoon; they built a fence for a man who lives 8 miles up the valley.  He needed a new fence to keep the range cows out of his property. Every year when the ranchers turn their cows out on the range nearby, some of the cows get into his place because the old fence was falling down. Michael and Nick got new fence finished just in time—on the day the cows went to the range. One old cow who always got through the fence came over the hill and paced around the new fence twice before she gave up and went back over the hill.

Our last cow was overdue 5 days from her projected calving date, and finally went into labor Monday morning. I had to go to the eye doctor that morning (with a serious eye infection) so Andrea stayed here and watched the cow till Lynn and I got back from town. The cow started active labor late afternoon. When the calf’s feet appeared, they were huge, and we assumed it was a big bull calf, and thought we might have to pull it. But she calved ok without help, and when Andrea and I dipped the navel stump in iodine we were surprised to see that it was a heifer calf.

By the time it nursed, Dani was home from school and wanted to help us move the pair to a pen by the barn. The calf was still pretty so Dani helped push her along. Dani and Sam named the calf Butterfly Eyebrow because one of the white marks above her eyes looks like a butterfly. We’re calling her Butterflybrow for short. Dani loves the cattle and often pretends she’s a cow. A few days ago she found some ear tags and a cow tag in the old toy box at our house, and used tape to attach them to herself, going around on all fours and mooing like a cow!

           

Later she helped us put the cows and calves in the upper end of the swamp pasture where there’s more grass. We are saving the lower part of that pasture (which is fenced off from the creek) in case the creek comes up higher and we have to move them into a safe place where the calves won’t be at risk for drowning. Those pastures are boggy right now, and we have two more calves with foot rot.  This morning Lynn and I sorted out Rosalie and her calf (Zorrarose) and Cupie Doll and her calf (Panda Bear) and brought them down to the corral to treat their calves for foot rot.

Today Dani’s class at school had a field trip to see the Big Hole Battlefield in Montana. Andrea and Robbie went along with the class to help with the field trip. This is Andrea’s birthday; she’s 45 today.  Lynn and I silently celebrated the fact that we have a 45-year-old daughter and 3 very special grandchildren that would not exist if Andrea had perished in the fire 15 years ago this summer. We have much to be thankful for.

MAY 31 – Michael wrote an article for Progressive Forage Grower magazine, published this month.  He hopes to start doing more writing again. Perhaps the publication of his daughter Heather Carrie’s first book will encourage him to do more writing!  Her book, Basic Horsemanship: How to Stay Safe with Your Horse, just came out and is now available through the publisher (The Frontier Project), Amazon.com and other booksellers.  We are very proud of her accomplishment.  Emily’s photos are on the front and back covers.

Young Heather hasn’t seen the book yet; she is presently in Canada visiting her friend Gregory on his grain farm. 

Last Sunday we brought the cows and calves down from the swamp pasture and brought the heifers from the horse pasture. Michael, Carolyn and Nick helped us vaccinate, deworm and tag the 10 heifers—putting new ear tags in theirs and brisket tags on our heifers (their permanent numbers).  Then they hauled their heifers to the upper place. We vaccinated our cows and bulls, then branded and vaccinated our calves. Dani helped, and enjoyed lounging around with the calves in the shade of the shed as they waited to be branded.

Cub Cake’s calf was lame on a hind leg when we let him out of the calf chute after branding him, and we think he may have cracked a leg bone getting it caught in the chute. So we left him and his mama in the back pen with another cow and calf and didn’t put them up in the field with the rest of the cows.

On Monday I let Rubbie and Veggie out into the barnyard area next to their pens to let them graze.  They are eager for green grass. In the warmer weather Veggie is no longer so stiff and lame, and his arthritic joints will also do better if he’s moving around more. Out on pasture with his old buddy he won’t be needing “bute” every day. I let the two old horses adjust to the change in diet gradually, grazing briefly the first day, and longer the next, until by the 4^th day they could stay out fulltime on the grass.

Dani has been helping me do chores when she gets home from school, and enjoys interacting with the cattle and horses. She helped move the cattle back to the upper part of the swamp pasture, and likes to check off the cows and calves in the pasture daily and make sure they are all doing ok.

On Thursday Andrea went with Dani’s class on their field trip to go fishing. I helped Lynn nail another pole on the fence in the back corral where frost heaves have raised the fence a bit, leaving too much space where calves might possibly crawl under the lowest pole. Andrea helped Lynn change irrigation water when she got home from town, then took clothes for Sam and Charlie to change into after school for their band and vocal concert. Lynn and I did chores early and went to hear their concert.  Sam had a trumpet solo in her band group, and she and Charlie both got several special awards for their accomplishments this year in band and chorus.

Michael and Carolyn had a busy day, hauling horses to the vet at Challis (70 miles away)—one for dental surgery, and their mare and foal, for correctional surgery on the foal’s front legs. When they came home they had a problem with the hydraulic steering on their tractor. Michael and Nick went to town for parts and spent the evening fixing it.

On Friday Nick started digging post holes and setting more posts in the fence between our 160-acre hill pasture and the neighboring one. This is a new fence that we built only 3 years ago, but the neighbor’s cattle have pushed it so hard reaching through for grass (when they ran out of feed on their side the past 2 years) that they loosened the wires and pushed some of the steel posts crooked. Then last fall they sorted their range cattle in the bottom corner and rammed and jammed them against the fence so hard that they knocked wires off and bent some of the steel posts. We are now putting wood posts in every space between steel posts and tightening the wires. We’ll have to completely rebuild the fence on the bottom end and plan to put poles on that section.

This weekend Andrea and Robbie put steel posts down across the field below the lane and put up an electric fence to divide it. We will graze the wet area on the lower end that we can’t cut for hay; it takes too long to get it dry enough to not sink into the mud with the haying equipment.

JUNE 11 – We’ve had lightning storms but not much rain. Weather turned hot and dry. Last Tuesday Andrea and Dani helped move the cattle to the field below the lane.

Michael and Nick set more posts in the fence along our 160 pasture and Andrea went to Dani’s school program. Then the kids went to their “end of school party” at the school. They had their last day of school the next day, and had to go to their dad’s place that evening. Things are a bit tense, since Mark re-opened the divorce case and is trying to get full custody of the 3 kids instead of the current shared custody (he gets them every other week during summer, every other weekend during the school year, and alternating years on various holidays). Things were working fairly well this way, until this past December when Mark’s new girlfriend moved in with him. The kids don’t mind spending part of the time with their dad but they don’t like the girlfriend.

On Friday Michael and Nick built a weir for our ditch that serves the field on Heifer Hill so we can measure how much water we are actually getting to our field. This is a ditch we share with our neighbor Alfonzo above us; he can have half of it as long as there is plenty of water in the creek, but after the creek gets low, this ditch is our water because our place has a prior water right. We’ve had problems because he keeps taking more than his half and we need a way to show how much is actually getting to our place.

Saturday Michael and Nick made an adjustment to the corral on the upper place; they created a little chute with panels, to funnel calves to a branding table. On Sunday Michael, Carolyn and Nick rounded up their cows and calves on the 160-acre pasture and brought them down to that corral to brand and vaccinate. We drove up there to see the bull calf we’ll be buying from them when he is weaned this fall.

Then we helped guard a bad spot in the fence to keep their bull from jumping in with the cows, and helped sort some of the cows. They ran the cows through their running chute to vaccinate and deworm.

Then they branded and vaccinated the calves. Nick pushed them one by one into the little chute to the calf table, where Michael branded and Carolyn vaccinated them. They kept two calves as bulls (and didn’t castrate them)—one for them and one for us. 

Then they took the cows and calves back to the 160-acre hill pasture. They’ll stay there a few more weeks until they put the bull in with them.

Lynn helped Andrea clip the long hair off her dogs for summer; they’ve been miserably hot in this warmer weather.

On Monday we moved the cows and calves down to the old “post pile pasture” for a few days. The grass there is as tall as their shoulders. We keep rotating them around the ranch, letting the grazed pastures regrow. That afternoon Andrea and I rode Ed and Breezy, and that evening we let Cub Cake and her calf (with the healing leg) into the grassy pen next to the corral they’ve been living in. He is walking on that leg pretty well now.

Tuesday morning early (while it was still cool) Michael put shoes on Ed and Breezy for me and we rode them later that day, getting them ready for the little girls to ride them again. Lynn’s back is really bothering him; he overdid working on some fence-fixing in the post pile pasture.

John Miller hauled 18 heifers and a bull to the 160-acre hill pasture adjacent to ours (which he is sub-leasing from Alfonso for the summer), so there is now a bull right through the fence from Michael’s cows and heifers. They were nose-to-nose when Lynn drove up there to talk to the carpenters working on my brother’s new house (we are buying some hay from one of them), so he chased Michael’s herd up away from the fence and put a lot of staples in that part of the fence. This is the part that got so badly damaged last fall when the neighbors sorted their cattle against it, and it needs rebuilt.

Later that day, one of John’s heifers crawled through another fence (next to the road) and came down the road. She went into Michael’s barnyard, and then when Nick chased her out she went on down the road, past our place, and into Alfonzo’s field through his open gate. She went across his fields, through the fence on the far side, over the hill and back home to John’s place!

Yesterday morning Michael put shoes on Dottie for me. Andrea and I rode Sprout and Dottie up the creek and herded John’s cattle up out of the creek bottom and up the draw so they would go up on the mountain to graze. Later that afternoon Michael put shoes on Sprout, just ahead of a thunderstorm.

This evening the kids got home from spending a week with Mark and they were delighted and excited to be home. Dani hiked down to the post pile pasture with me to check on the cows and calves and was able to pet Mini-Mag—her favorite calf.

JUNE 21 – Last week Sam and Dani rode with us several times while they were home. The day that Alfonzo and Millers moved their range cattle (from the low range pasture to the middle range) they missed 17 cows and their calves on the upper end of that pasture. We came across several small groups of cattle during our ride and gathered them. Sam and Dani were good help moving those cattle to the middle range.

With those cattle gone from the low range, we could move our cows and calves to the little hill pasture above our house. We didn’t want to move them up there until there were no bulls adjacent to them, since we don’t want any of our cows bred quite this early. Andrea and Robbie helped Lynn haul our water troughs up there, and pumped water for the cows (from our ditch across the road), and on Saturday we moved them up there. Dani caught and saddled Ed and rode with us to move the cows.

That evening Michael went up the creek to check on his cows and found Miller’s bull trying to get over the fence to breed one of Michael’s heifers, so he chased the bull away from the fence, with the help of his dog, and moved his herd of cattle out of our 160-acre pasture, up to the 320. He hadn’t planned to go into that 320-acre pasture until he puts his bull with his cows, but this crisis forced an early change. Rebuilding that part of the fence, between us and Alfonzo’s pasture, with poles instead of wires, is now a high priority. We talked with John Miller and he will help dig the post holes with his tractor and auger and will furnish some of the poles for it.

Last Monday Andrea and Lynn went to pump water for the cows on our hill pasture and the ditch was drying up. Our neighbor Alfonzo had taken all the water again! They had to go up the ditch and adjust the dam he put across it. We have to fill the water troughs every other day while the cows are in that pasture.

On Wednesday Charlie wanted to ride with us, so he rode Breezy and we made a short loop out over the low range. This was Charlie’s first ride this year and he enjoyed getting out in the hills, seeing the wildlife (including antelope), and the cactus in bloom.

Emily passed her 3rd test (math) for her GED and hopes to take the last test (science) later this week. When she passes it, she will be the first student from her age group to get her GED, graduating from high school a year ahead of her class.