After spending the morning watering the plants, and picking raspberries (which are past their prime), I then had breakfast then caught up on my sleep. With these hot temperatures I am splitting my sleep time between night and afternoon.
Dan stopped by with three bloat blocks for the cattle. He is still cleaning up from last Wednesday's storm. His home phone still does not work. When things got uprooted the phone wires were pulled from the ground. He only has two trees left now. One of the trees that fell, fell on the highway. This was better than the other alternative: his house. He had another tree fall on one of his loafing sheds. Fortunately he had moved the cattle from that pen to another earlier that afternoon.
After my early afternoon nap I was ready for the heat of the day and outside work - once I woke up. The cattle will be returned to the south pasture tomorrow. While Jim's pasture still has good grass by the river, the neighbor across the river told me Sunday that he plans to let his cattle and bull into the property across the river this Wednesday. My cattle have been spending time the past days along the river and along the neighbor's fence. Yes, there is a fence, but I've been told fences won't stop a bull from reaching a heifer in heat. I don't care to witness this and will move my cattle to the south pasture in preparation for them to go into the hayfield once they have been on bloat blocks for 48 hours. All my pastures border the river, but I believe the south pasture has the least chance of the cattle spending time along the neighbor's fence.
It may sound harsh, but I don't want my "girls" to have sex with that bull. It is a Hereford bull on top of that - not that I discriminate - but with cattle, black is better.
With the river level much lower since the last time they were there I wanted to check the river and island in the south pasture. I ended up adding to my two-strand fence. I also fenced off a finger of the island - no sense letting the cattle go down the finger as they may get a 'wrong' idea from a different view of the area.
Our high temperature today was 97 degrees. Even though I was working by the river it was in a low area with lots of trees. Yup, the sweat poured off me. My t-shirt got soaked. My sunglasses were soaked and I couldn't use my shirt to clean their lens so I took them off. Later as I bent down to pull a weed a small tree branch poked my eye. My vision is still good, but my eye is sore.
On the way home I checked out a tall pine tree in the south pasture that had apparently blown over in last Wednesday's storm. Another big one down. The pine had grown right next to a western larch (tamarack) tree. The pine was on the NW side of the tamarack and had blown over to the NW. Another thing for my "to-so" list: trim the branches from the tree to let it dry for later cutting into firewood.
After returning home to drink "gallons" of water - and waiting out a few light rain sprinkles where the rain fell from nowhere in a sunny sky - I went to check gopher traps and cattle.
No gophers found. I think they have gone underground for the year. Too bad as I only caught 80 of them this year. This is less than the 82 I caught last year. And I know more are left to catch next year as a few areas I had heard them chirp their warnings a week or so ago are areas I hadn't trapped yet.
The cattle... a few were in Jim's pasture next to the river. The rest were elsewhere. They know the way home. I went to check on more gopher traps, then it started to rain really hard. I took shelter under a tall pine tree and stayed dry the 20 minutes or so it rained.
As I checked the remaining gopher traps the clouds were preparing for another rain. They were moving and darkening and several long lightning bolts flashed to the ground to the south. Thunder slowly rumbled across the darkening sky.
After checking the remaining gopher traps I noticed a dozen cattle were in the north pasture. Tonight they figured out how to cross to the north pasture and not back to Jim's pasture.
Five were still in Jim's pasture and they hugged the fence mooing. They wanted to join the group in the north pasture. I didn't want them split overnight and went to herd the dozen back into Jim's pasture.
As I crossed the middle pasture to north pasture I saw a big lightning bolt flash from high in the sky to the ground to the NW. Then the thunder roared overhead and I half ducked down. I need to move the cattle fast and get out of here.
A number of cattle came out of the trees across the river and stood on a gravel bar trying to figure how how to join the north pasture cattle. I went to the shallow part of the river bank and called them. They wouldn't come and kept looking at the other cattle above the high river bank. I guess I need to show them where to cross the river, but I didn't want to cross the river again. I had dried out from my afternoon river crossing where my pants legs slipped into the river and got soaked. And I didn't have my river crossing shoes with me. Last night I went barefoot on the gravel bed, but I didn't feel like doing so tonight.
It began to rain again and the cattle didn't want to be herded as they had just discovered the north pasture and the fresh grass. I went to open the gate between the pasture but it began to rain hard. I ran for cover under a tree. I turned around to find the dozen cattle that didn't want to be herded were following me. I ran in the rain and opened the gate. The five in Jim's pasture came to the gate and I had to herd them away. The dozen in my pasture came to the gate and a couple walked through but the others milled around - they didn't really want to cross into Jim's pasture.
By now the cattle across the river had crossed over to Jim's pasture and were running to join everyone. I had to do some running and cutting off of cattle, and some cattle in Jim's pasture came out as others entered, but eventually I got all the cattle into Jim's pasture and the gate closed. I had to do it faster and harsher than I like but I didn't have time to walk and talk them into doing what I wanted. It was raining and lightning. I didn't count the herd as they were excited and running and milling and I was breathing water.
I ran home soaked to the bone. When I saw myself in the mirror I looked like a near drowned wet rat.
The shower felt so good!
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