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SPRING! SPRING! SPRING!
February ended just as mean and nasty as it had started but when March breezed in it brought warmth and renewed spirits.
The snow melted but on the highest peaks, things were muddy for just a week or two before the blazing sun dried everything up. The ice melted out of the tanks making life so much easier. We had some days in the mid 60’s and some nights that barely left any ice on the tubs. The last week has been a bit raw with wind, over an inch of steady rain and then six inches of thick wet snow. It is perfect timing to make the spring grass come on.
So with the new season and new spirits we move on. The plans of the last log as far as selling the cows and going to yearlings has changed…what else is new around here. The yearling biz is just too risky and only a game for someone with deep pockets. So we are staying with the cowherd and hopefully running a few yearlings along side for extra income but not too much risk.
The winter finances were harder this year than in the past due to keeping all the heifers I did last November to replace the old cows I had sold. Doing this meant only half of my usual fall paycheck. Then the long hard winter with feed bills double previous years was a breaker. E bay came to the rescue. Besides the truck we sold to Tanya we sold the van, a 1994 F350 which had been in the store yard for years and the unique ’64 Airstream motor home we had.
The van bought market price and went to Idaho, the ’94 which I had tried giving away brought really good money and is now in the Bahamas! The “Turtle” was a big hit with over 7,000 viewers and we got 20x what we had paid for it seven years ago. It went to Ill. We sold these all the same week and that was a much needed boost. E bay has made everything a quick liquid asset.
The beginning of the month I continued my riding using Fence tank as my base. I had Dakota and Gambler with me, those two are so good in camp. Usually one cowboy has three horses in camp so one is never left behind alone. These two guys know the routine, the one not working that day will watch you ride off and never make a sound or try to follow. I did a couple big loops staying at both Fence tank and the cabin in Canyon Creek.
There really isn’t much cattle work to do other than just ride around and keep and eye out for wolves and watching the heavy bred cows making sure they are going to calve alright. We have a few dozen calves on the ground now.
The cattle have come through the winter in great shape, there isn’t a poor cow out there and we had no death loss at all.
We had the Saddle pack of wolves on us a couple days but I made enough noise to drift them back to the east.
The Luna pack has been just south of the H.Q. a mile or so for most of the month but now we have a new pair of wolves here at the house. The yearling female from the Luna pack left them and joined up with a 3 Y.O. male that has been living here in the valley all winter.
They killed an elk right at the cattle guard next to the shipping pens. It was a wild night, the horses were running crazy, dogs barking, wolves howling, elk screaming.
In the morning that 700 pound bull elk was almost totally devoured, only thing left were the legs, head, backbone and skin. 10 hours 2 wolves and it was gone. These two wolves we see just about every day.
Maggie was in Michigan for a week or so, her dad has been in the hospital and having a tough time of it but now seems to be recovering.
Nate came back the middle of the month to take over the riding for a few weeks while Cassady was here for his spring break. The weather was great to be outside and we got a lot of things done. We cut fence posts, built fence around the house, cleaned out the storage building, rode a bit, shot a lot of BB’s and drove a lot. We hauled all our breeding horses and young stuff out to Canyon Creek keeping them in the corrals there a few days before turning them loose. So we had to drive out there every day for feeding, that trip out there gets old real fast. It’s only 24 miles to that side of the ranch but it takes 1.5 hours and it is really rough now, even worse than usual. We also went to Albq. to a muscle car show, a long trip to look at cars. But it was fun, Cassady has the same bug for fast old American metal.
So that’s the news from the ranch, grass getting green, horses shedding out, calves hitting the ground, yea man I’m ready for another year!
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