Fixin’ to be a real pretty day out there.

I rode in to town with a neighbor  yesterday and he dropped me off at Whitewood where I picked up the Taurus with the rebuilt tranny. Drove over to St Onge and visited and sat with a friend from up on the Grand river who was selling calves. Market was poppin’. 495 pound red heifers brought $1.22. Of course if you figure in your time and feed bill, that don’t look too hot, but sure is better than 85 cents.

The season of mud has returned. Better go see if the little short team can drag bales in the mud! 🙂

Kind of blizzardy out there. For your amusement and to help pass the time, here’s your assignment kids.

Go here

http://www.theadvocates.org/quizp/index.html

Take the quick and easy test and report back with the findings. Won’t take a minute and very interesting. Might even surprise you.

9:00 AM UPDATE!!!!!!!

Got everything fed out of the wind. Yup, we got a full fledged spring blizzard on our hands. Not much snow coming with it and I am glad the snow we got yesterday was wet or it would be drifting even worse. Two ways to look at this. Either it’s just one more nasty bit of business to suffer thru’, or it’s a sure sign that it’s one less storm to have until green grass time. I hesitate to use the word spring as we can get lots of weather after the official start of “spring.”

Now, back to your regularly scheduled blog. 🙂

Snow that is.

Got a couple three inches of fresh white out there this morning. Woo hoo! Life is great. With this m uch moisture, we are bound to have a good year!

Don’t you hate it when I am, all sassy and happy? Especially when it’s about weather we are all tired of?

Oh well, nothing we can do about it, so lets try to be happy, okay kids?

LOL

Just think, we could have this clear up past the first of May! Sure hope the neighbor doesn’t run out of hay as I might have to buy some more.

😉

Got up over 40 today. Maybe even close to 50. Lots of squishy ishy out there now children!

I fed a bale to the cows with the tractor and moved some snow around before the cold weather comes back. Man, there is going to be some fence to fix this spring. Better get my little spring wagon rigged up for my team.

Built a set of taps for a feller today. Here’s a picture.

I don’t remember a winter when it has been this foggy. Of course, with my memory, that isn’t saying much. But it just seems like day after day we are foggy and have hoar frost. Lost electricity yesterday for several hours, I suppose because of the frost falling off the lines and snapping back to touch each other, thereby blowing a fuse or breaker or whatever they have on the lines. And our provider is 70 miles away at Bison. So it’s a long drive for them guys to have to come down and kick a breaker on. You’d think we’d have someone stationed down closer, but for some reason we don’t.

Any way, because of the fog and feeding in it with the team this morning, it made me think of this poem I wrote years ago, on a morning like this. Very similar. This is probably one of my favorite poems I have ever written. I didn’t mean it to be funny, but when I recite it most folks laff at the last line.

Comprehension

Like ghosts they materialize
Appearing through the fog to get their feed
Shuffling so carefully, over the ice
Conditions dictate their speed

With shaggy, unkempt hair
Hip joints jutting from rail thin back
Swinging, swaying, udders look like
Old gloves hanging from a rack

Steam swirls up from their nostrils
Only to vanish in the clinging mist
They drop their heads down to reach the feed
This is our daily tryst

I wonder if they think I’m a god
I provide for them from their birth to the grave
Then I’m hit with sudden, awestruck realization
To them, I’m merely a slave

I drove Cindy in this morning. woke a little before 4, showered and we headed out about 4:30. Drove in dense fog the whole way. I dropped her off at her job and headed for Rapid and read a book I brought along (fascinating story about one of the first SEAL teams in Nam) while waiting on and eating breakfast at Perkins. I wonder how them people who work there can be so cheerful in the morning?

I piddled around, shopped and did some business all morning and then met Fr Tyler for an early lunch at an old bistro, that was bought and redone by a young feller in the last year or so. Tally’s. Cool place. Not the cheapest place to eat, but fun and a good Ruben sandwich.

Got back to Sturgis, bought licenses for the outfits and read and waited for Cindy to get off work. He car quit on her last week and it’s the tranny. So we drove to Spearfish to look for replacements as her old one has lots of miles and found one she liked so she made the deal and drove it home. A Saturn like my old wreck that we’ve all driven for years and had good luck with. Makes me sad the company went out of business. Hope this one is as good as the old one.

My young neighbor up the road will be hosting a Buster McLaury Clinic at the family ranch, this fall on the 16 thru the 19 of September.

Colt starting will cost $475

Horsemanship will cost $400

Ranch Roping will cost $400

Contact Brad Andrews for more info or to let them know you are coming at 605 985 5493

Buster does a great job and is really there for the horse and rider. I thought maybe some of my far away friend who were thinking of coming this direction might want to make plans to attend this. We have some room here if anyone needs it and if you call Brad, he can help you make arrangements.

Had a little excitement this morning while feeding.
Going thru’ a gate with the team, while taking the horses the last little bit of the bale I had unrolled for the cattle, I have been trying to talk the team thru’ without taking a hold of the lines and just using my voice. They are getting better all the time and I walk alongside and holler “whoa” if it looks like it isn’t going to work or they start to get off course.

Last couple days they have worked real good and just act like an old broke team should. Today as we went thru’ there were a lot of horses right there and the team had to walk out on some ice and break thru. Which was fine, but they pulled up short so I’d have to speak to them again to “get up”. Then I’d have to stop them as they were a little nervous and then I’d speak to them again so we were going about it in fits and jerks and I really hated to leave the gate and let a bunch of loose horses out. The last time I said whoa, they ignored me and just kept going, headed for the other side of the corral and the open gate! I went on the run across the ice and swung the gate behind me all at the same time and just got them headed off and stopped before they hit the other fence.

Here’s some pictures to help see where we went.

Isn’t it odd how, oh I don’t know, maybe odd is the right word, that we are? A while back when I saw it was going to warm up in the low 2o’s I was pretty excited and happy. Now I see it’s going to get up to 22 or 23 today for a high and I am disappointed. Never satisfied, are we?

Oh well, it will be back up in the 30’s again tomorrow and then they are saying 40’s.

I don’t care what Missy say’s, talking about the weather, this time of the year, is about as exciting as it gets around here! 😛

That and calving, near calving or “Oh why in the hell did we turn the bulls in so early last spring” comments I hear from a few.

It’s been warm enough that it has melted enough snow and ice to try and run some water.

Interesting thing going on over to the local village. The powers that be (feds) decided to replace the bridge across Red Owl creek. This bridge is used daily by lots of traffic. A few years ago they put one of those rubber lines across the road that counts traffic and there was an average of 110 vehicles use that road daily! Amazing for our sleepy little village.

So federal mandates said the bridge had to be redone. Last fall they came in and dropped a small culvert or two in the creek and covered it with dirt for a detour, just up stream from the bridge. Supposedly they would start on the new beridge the 1st of March. Guess what? Yeah, snow, ice and not a very handy time to work on a bridge, right now. The people who live in the village are a little peeved and can’t understand why they didn’t get this done last fall or summer or even wait and do it this summer. There is no way the small culvert or culverts will handle the flow of water that is about to start coming down the creek. The “experts” (it is to laugh! Ha!) claim the excess will flow out and north of the creek in a shallow wide drainage. The problem with that plan is, there is a tiny culvert where the water is supposed to go under the road, and the end of that culvert has been mashed down over the years from different incidents. The past couple springs when we’ve had quite a little spring run off, the unobstructed creek and that small culvert could barely handle the flow. And now we have ice and snow packed deep and ready for the spring flood which looks to be much more than the past few years. Hmmm……

Hope them folks have good flood insurance!

Maybe those in power who say it will work should move in alongside this creek until the work is done?

Had a guy come out and got my pellet stove to working. I am not too sure why them  type of people are better at these things than I am other than the fact I am about as mechanical as a stick!

Started the tractor and checked out the new loader pump. Wow! I’d forgot my loader could work that fast and effortlessly! Went up the creek and dug some wood out for the kids and dug some bales out and hauled a few home. Got a little water running in the creek. Cool! Better get my kayak ready! 🙂

Now I need to take the grapple fork off and clean out the back of the shed and get it ready for Chances calving cows. They are supposed to start the 15 of March. Ours will go sometime after the 1st of April. Still plenty early. Especially with the winter we’ve had, but if it would stay like this for a couple weeks we’d be more brown than white, seems like. Ahhhh, I can always hope!