Cindy and I did a calf check yesterday morning, caught Crackerjack and loaded him, a saddle and chaps and headed to Dustin’s. We left Crackie for awhile for Dustin to train on and brought Hub home.. he put about 45 days on him and he’s pretty nice… he could do about anything offs him he wanted. I’d hoped to ride him today, but woke up real early and couldn’t go back to sleep for awhile and when I did wake up the second time realized I’d picked up a cold.. so i been eating L Lysine, Echinasia and Airborn, along with a cold pill and my Tureric I take every day.. felt snotty all day, took a nap and didn’t rest good.. didn’t do much other than the chores.. we had another set of twins today… so Gramma has two bottle babies unless something loses a calf and we can graft it on.. I hear there are quite a few twins.. both of these sets were heifer calves.. Tate too Gabe and Lige to State Shooting sports. sounds like Gabe did good and Lige had some bad luck. oh well, there is always next year. Chance takes Gus down on Sunday for his meet at State.. they are held in Pierre or Ft Pierre, I don’t remember what they said, tonight we went out and forged for awhile.. I’d like to build quite a few things for the new house.. got to cut back on expenses somewhere!!! We are all getting quicker at drawing a heat and hammering stuff out.. if I ever remember I will take some photos to post… windy today and supposed to get a little tomorrow and then 5 days of a good chance for rain, so I hope we get a bunch. Our first branding to go to is supposed to be on Friday..

Dustin saddling Hub to show me what he can do, with his new saddle… we raised Hub, he will be 4 in June…

KInd of cold and snowy this morning, but no wind.. by this afternoon it was just mud and green grass. Had three new babies out there this morning… got another one about mid morning.. pretty big day for no more than are supposed to be calving.. everybody was fine.. I fed out behind the house and then went out horseback and brought the rest in. Chance joined me before i was done… went back out this afternoon and tagged and kicked a couple of pairs out and a cow who had left her calf up the creek, kicked the rest of the drop batch back out east where they belong, then rode and checked on the pairs, they were all fine.. rode out the creek and pasture to make sure there wasn’t any problem, came in and got Gramma and the tractor and we took a bale up to the pairs. Worked on the forge for awhile, made probably the best half of a set of tongs I’ve ever made, so it’s getting better. We completely cleaned all the old coal and junk out of the forge and started over with fresh coal and when we went to draw a forge weld it worked great… I ordered more and we are going to need it.. the boys didn’t understand that you have to clean all the clinkers out or your just wasting coal… we drove down to Punkin Center and fueled up this evening then over to Nellies for supper. Chance and Hope and the kids were there so we all ate together.. heard some news from neighbor.. when we got home a couple of fence crawlers were out so I went out and worked Bit on them.. she is doing good for just a 5 month old pup.. need to get a better handle on her, but she is still pretty young.. wish i had a few head of easy sheep to work her on..Tate worked on plumbing and had to run to town to get more for the house and do some other odds and ends.. I got a little leather work done and some more leather in today, for a set of chaps. Got some saddles i need to repair for some people. Seems like there is always plenty to do…

We’ve had rain and snow and wind for the past few days… nothing real fierce… we gathered all the calving cows and kept them in the lane behind shelter belts, but yesterday evening the cows were tired of being locked up.. they got the gate open and let themselves into the small pasture where the new house sets.. so i fed them some more hay and left them, didn’t seem like they’d hurt anything.. this morning at daylight when i went to check, they had got a gate open and were mostly back up west along the creek, so i drove and checked, no new calves,,, wish I could leave them up there, but there is too much water alongside steep creek banks and sure as heck some cow will calve alongside a creek and the new calf will go for a chilly swim before the calf is able to swim… I hate dead calves.. later on, we will bring them back with hay and horses and put them back out east where we don’t have to worry about steep creek banks…. we went to a jam/ open mic at the neighbors on Saturday evening.. had a good time. Then Chance and Hope had several families over after Mass yesterday. More music and visiting.. getting quite a few branding’s on the calendar.. Tate had an appointment at the VA today so no house work for awhile today. I need to finish up some chaps and order leather for another pair for a guy who stopped in on Friday and got measured… need to get back out to the forge and do some more also. Seems like there is plenty of things to keep me busy around here, not to mention some fencing.. but then there is always some fencing to do… I lost my hearing aid awhile back.. I’d stuck it in a shirt pocket when the battery went dead.. snapped it in and everything, so i wouldn’t lose it.. washed shirts and realized I had forgotten to get it out.. checked all my shirts, nope, no hearing aid.. this morning when I put on a clean shirt.. there it was.. i put a new battery in and it works! Cool.

When I went outside this morning and the wind wasn’t blowing! Amazing….. Cindy and I just came in from going and finding branches and sticks for the rails on the bannister.. cut a bunch of dead diamond willow and then picked up a bunch of rotted off fence posts.. not sure what or where we will use them, or even if, but any should look cool if we do it right.

We got the south half of the ceiling in the bedroom finished yesterday.. we have to wait on the other side until we get all the plumbing done as there are pipes that have to go up and duct work out.. we also finished pitting up boards on the west inside gable wall.. just stacked up ruff cut pine boards and nailed them to the studs.. looks good, if you like rustic… Didn’t have my phone so didn’t get any photo’s..had two new calves this morning.. I had ordered some tags last week, but when they came in they were the wrong kind.. so I dropped them off up near Sturgis and re ordered, when Cindy and I went to town the other day…. hopefully they will get here soon, tho’ some of these mama’s don’t act like they want their calves to wear a pretty, new ear tag..

Only up around 60 mph.. scattered a bunch of our boards up by the new house and we were hauling them in, fighting the wind. Real good day to do an explanation of how airplanes fly, I’d think… or to fly a kite!

Got the rest of the boards up in the ceiling of the dining room/ living room. Started putting up board on the gable end, inside, west wall. 16 foot roof cut pine.. kind of heavy. Tate cut and handed them up to the loft area and Gramma and I put them up.. until we’d screw up and he’d have to come fix it! 😀

Chance and Hope helped this morning and Chance for awhile this afternoon, at least until we got done with the ceiling.. Chance cut and handed up to me and Tate and Hope.. Hope doesn’t mind height, after she gets there but isn’t fond of the getting up and down! And Gramma flat refuses to come up and play, no matter how much I begged her! Addy Bear ran up and down and fetched things when she could… Gramma would come up in the loft area and hand cut boards on up to us… Bit wasn’t much help at all. I had cows get back out into a pasture where I didn’t want them , so I drove out to check and took Bit along and she got to chase cows.. she sure thinks she’s tuff.. good thing them cows bluff easily.

Tate and I worked on a bench and made us a peeling horse.. you set on it, and it holds a stick or small log so you can easily peel it.. we will be peeling lots of sticks to use on the bannisters…

We got the wood on half the ceiling in the living/ dining room today. Rick Smiley came over after dinner and helped me and Tate… sure helped a bunch, having someone to cut it and pass it up to us, standing on top of a fake floor on two sets of scaffolding.. kind of a high spot up there! Tate thinks he has a plan for the other side where it is just pen clear to the top… hope it’s a good one!

Some of these lease cows could start calving after April 1 so Cindy and I drove out and checked them last night and tonight.. there is a pretty steep creek with water in it where they are at and I ain’t so sure some of them crows are smart enough not to have one alongside and drop him in the water… gonna have to move them here shortly so we don’t lose any, as cheap as they are, you can’t afford to lose one!

Bit got to help chase a cow in that was out this morning while I was feeding so she is pretty sure she is a sure enough cow dawg! She will learn the errors of her ways, one of these days, but she is little enough yet, I am pretty careful with her… windy today (what’s new?) but it died down this evening and all in all it’s been a real mild winter, never hardly got below zero and not a lot of snow.. I am predicting a dry year, sure hope I’m wrong, but we can’t always have just real wet years…

It rained last night and this morning we have a skift of snow…. windy and only supposed to get up into the 30’s… I think it’s a good day to work on leather in the shop… We got the north side of the house all chinked the other day when it was warm. Tates had other things going on so hasn’t been able to work on the house a lot this past week.. we got all the cows from up west in yesterday and deloused them and tagged ones that needed it. I ran the head catch and plumb tuckered myself out. Being fat and out of shape is hard on me! 😀

Gramma and I hustled down to Rapid today. We watched Gus at shooting sports then off to watch Gabe and Lige wrestle at regionals. It’s hard work watching them, we strain so hard to help them while watching and I even shouted some encouragement to the wrestlers… Gus and Gabe and Lige all qualified for State on Friday night in shooting Sports. Neither Gabe or Lige made it on to state but they wrestled real hard. Proud of the hard work them boys are putting in…