A yellow thing

Today I saw something I hadn't seen in a long time: the sun.  Yes!  The sun!   The sun shone until about 1 pm when the clouds came back and covered everything.   At least it didn't snow today though the weather forecast is snow everyday the rest of the week.  With no new snow today I only needed several hours to clean the snow that fell yesterday after I had finished cleaning the driveway.

Here are some sun photos...  (You can compare the same scenes from photos in previous blog posts over the past few days that show how it looked on a cloudy day).

Oh yeah, when I was gone uptown this afternoon a vehicle slid off the road into the ditch.  When I saw the flashing lights as I made my way home my first thought was the vehicle (a small SUV) had taken out my mailbox.  But that was where the vehicle was parked after being pulled out of the ditch.  The woman had slid off the road on the straight section before reaching my mailbox. *whew*  While the road had been plowed of snow earlier in the morning, judging from the vehicle's tire tracks she had misjudged where the road was on the straight section.  Once a vehicle's tire slips off the road, with the ditch around here, that pretty much guarantees the vehicle will go completely off the road.

Snow never stops

The snow has been falling non-stop since Thanksgiving Day.  Sunday I spent all afternoon again shoveling the snow from my driveway.

This is getting old fast - and it is only November!

Here I cleared part of the road that goes by the ranch.  The main reason was to prevent the snowplow from pushing the snow hard enough to damage my mailbox.  Once again letters are being printed in the newspaper complaining of mailbox damage due to snowplows.

The back 40.  With all the snow the deer stopped being active, else moved to another place. Lately I've only seen one set of deer tracks each day in the new snow.  Hunting season ended on Sunday and Kelly didn't get a deer this year.

Oh yeah... the gate

I forgot to mention that I had replaced one of my corral's gates before winter arrived and the snow came.

I had finished work on the north side of the corral and still had a few hours left so I decided to replace one of my light metal gates with a light metal tube gate.  This took longer than I expected as the two gates do not have the same distance between their hinge points.  I had to drill a new hole in the post for the top hinge of the new gate.

This a temporary change as eventually I want to replace the 12 ft gate with a 14 ft gate.  And a gate with thicker tubing.

The newer gate is an improvement as the old gate would flex outward when livestock pushed against the bottom in order to reach the grass in the yard.  I thought that one day the gate could break. That was the purpose of the tree stump near the gate.  The metal tube gate doesn't seem to flex when I try it - though the real test is when livestock push against it.

It was dark by the time I hung the gate so I still have finishing work to do on the gate.  The next day - as seen in the photo - it snowed.  For now the gate works.

The new gate has taken me a bit to get used to.  After dark I could still see the prior white gate.  Now in the dark I can't look in that direction to see if the gate is closed as the new gate blends in.

Working off the big meal

On Friday I worked off my Thanksgiving meal by shoveling the driveway.  The snow kept falling from Thanksgiving Day through Friday morning and it was starting to add up.  With the temperature in the 20s F (yay!) and no wind I spent most of the daylight hours Friday shoveling snow.  I got the driveway cleared, and also around the house.  I started on the backyard but mainly just made paths to the tool shed and the pole shed where the firewood is stored.

The weather forecast is for another two to six inches of snow by the end of Saturday so I'll see if I spend Saturday re-clearing what I already done, or if I get the backyard cleared.

For the first time in a number of years I didn't do any Black Friday shopping.

It's gonna be a long winter.

Here is a view of the driveway over halfway cleared to the road.

Thanksgiving

I hope everyone had a nice thanksgiving holiday. Here it looked more like Christmas than Thanksgiving. Today it snowed lightly all day and the roads were snow covered.  We got two more inches of snow today.

I drove to Peter and Edwina's house to have a thanksgiving meal with them and other friends of theirs. Peter and Edwina live up the North Fork road (though still on the paved section).  The snow was slippery enough that I drove no faster than 50 mph on the 70 mph road.  I ended up with a couple vehicles behind me which made it difficult to drive slower when I was near the road I needed that that turned off the North Fork road.  I "missed" the road as I couldn't stop or slow in time to make the turn.  Once I pulled over and stopped I had to back up a distance in order to get some speed as once I turned of the North Fork road I had to drive up a steep hill.  Even though my front wheel drive car is not a four-wheel drive vehicle, I made it up the hill.  I think it was due to my snow driving ability and confidence.  Go! Go!  Go!

On the walls of their house was a bear skin of the first black bear Edwina had shot.  She also has a moose hide and three bear skulls, along with set of large elk antlers and a deer and a bighorn sheep head.  Edwina likes to hunt.  The remainder of a deer carcass was outside for the neighborhood dogs to have their own Thanksgiving meal.

It was a nice meal and a nice conversation.  One neighbor now has running water after many years as he had a three to four hundred foot well drilled this past Spring.  One of his sources of water in the past was a pipe a few miles down the road.  A pipe is stuck into the side of the mountain and water steadily flows out of it year round.

After I got home Edwina called to say the power went out in their neighborhood.  It was a good thing this happened after the meal was over and the company gone.

Frozen trough

Here is why I am happy the horses left when they did.

Solid ice.

Happy Thanksgiving!

A stove is nice

The wind quit today.  The low temperature was only -12 degrees F and not the -18 that was predicted.  And our high temperature today was above zero.  Again, warmer than predicted.  Since we were only 2 degrees from setting a new record low temperature this must be another sign of global warming.

Still, I had my wood stove going steady.

I haven't spent much time outside the past few days.  It doesn't take long to get cold.  Wearing leather gloves was not the best as my hands got cold quick.

Wind and cold

Looks like the weather predictions are right - this is going to be a bad winter here.  It blew and stormed all day, and now at 11 pm a blizzard warning went into effect until 11 pm tomorrow.  We had single digit temperatures all day and the predicted low tonight is minus 10.

Needless to say I spent 99% of the day inside.  I was only outside to get more firewood and also to throw snow against the bottom of the barn door so the snow won't (will stop) blowing inside the barn.

I've had the wood stove going all day once I got it started after cleaning the ashes from it.  From a low of 46 degrees I got it up to 70 inside the house by evening.  Even then, from the sight of blowing snow, the sound of the wind howling outside, and the feeling that the wind was driving the cold through the house's walls, the only time I truly felt warm was hanging around the wood stove itself.

November 22.  Yup.  Yup.  Global warming.  Yup. Tell me another story.  You have the Brooklyn Bridge for sale also?

Sunday, before the wind picked up, the guy who lent me a metal round bale feeder came to get it as he needed it.  Dang.  I was hoping he wouldn't need it and would sell it to me.

Last evening shortly after dark a deer settled down for a rest near the house and just across the fence in the hayfield.  It was there for a while.

Tonight Kelly came to hunt. He lasted an hour, and I was impressed he lasted that long.

It is brutal out there.  Not much traffic goes by on the road.  No surprise.

Curved snow, day 2

Even though the temperature has remained between 11 and 16 degrees F since I took the photos of the barn roof's curved snow, the snow is slightly disappearing.

This is what I found today.

Beautiful, eh?

Curved snow

Our cold temperatures have arrived!  The day's temperature was in the mid teens and the wind blew steady.   It brought back memories of living n Minnesota.

As you can see the cold weather came just before all the snow melted/slid off the metal barn roof.

So today was a day spent inside with a wood stove to keep me warm.

Horse, beavers and a mountain lion

The horses left today.  It was time as Winter is fast approaching.  The cold temperatures would freeze the water trough each night until either the temperature warmed up or I broke the ice.  The river doesn't freeze so the horses always had access to water.  The grass had dried and with the snow it was more effort for them to find good grass to eat.

The owners took the horses in two loads.  First up was the blind horse and her daughter.  It was a challenge to load the blind horse as she had to step up slightly to get into the horse trailer.  As she is blind she banged her one leg against the trailer as she stepped forward and then didn't want to move anymore.  I lifted one of her front legs and placed her foot inside the trailer and after a bit she figured it out and stepped inside.

One of the foals must have AHAD as she wouldn't stand still long enough to get a halter on her.  She would go in  the trailer to eat the hay in a large bag hanging inside and then out of the trailer before we could either load the blind horse or close the trailer door.  Once we got the blind horse inside both foals went inside a bit to get hay. While the plan was to load one foal we got both loaded.  When the second foal was over half inside I patted her rear to get her move forward enough to get inside so we could close the door.

The two mares pictured below are older and we easily loaded them into the trailer for the second load.  Here they are pictured looking at the trailer as the owners prepared it for their loading.

The horses did well on my pasture.  Here is how the grass looked the end of June and how the horse (on the right in the above photo) looked when she first arrived.  All the horses were skinny when they arrived and all gained weight and looked good when they left.

I wished I had gotten photos of the foals when they left as they grew up also and look better.  Kind of like the difference between a 13 year old person and a seventeen or eighteen year old.

The spotted foal had such a large head when she first arrived and now her body caught up to her head.  Here is how she looked when she first arrived.

In other news, I helped my neighbor remove a small beaver dam on her property that was flooding her yard.  She had been battling this dam and a few others since she removed the large dam in the culvert earlier this Fall.  She found someone to trap the beavers and he will start this weekend.

The neighbor also told me there is another mountain lion in the area.  She has heard it; the lion killed a deer in the trees on the other side of the creek a little while back; and the beaver trapper seen signs of it.  The trapper got a permit and will kill it if it shows up again.

Today's weather wasn't too bad as the temperature stayed a little above freezing most of the day.  But the temperature is sinking now as the Arctic Express is getting closer and the cold air is spilling over the Continental Divide.

Wait 5 minutes

We had all sorts of weather today.  I woke up to a dusting of snow.  Then around noon it began to snow heavily. Big, thick, wet flakes.  I went to check the mail, and after the brief time I was outside, I had to brush the snow off my coat and pants before going back inside the house.

The mid afternoon the sun came out and the melting picked up steam.

(The cleared areas were where I had shoveled the snow away).

While the temperature was still (barely) above freezing I went out to the pastures and collected my pocket gopher traps.  To mark the locations I had put white milk jugs on thin poles.    That doesn't work all that well when the ground is snow covered.   It didn't help when one pole and milk jug had fallen over and was buried in the snow.  This pole and trap were just across the fence in my neighbor's filed and at first I thought someone had swiped my trap and pole.

I had caught three pocket gophers and found another trap filled with dirt.  Too bad I hadn't caught that gopher as that would have made 190 pocket gophers trapped for the year instead of 189.  I like round numbers.

Winter is here to stay

I spent most of the day shoveling three inches of wet heavy snow that wanted to stick to my shovel.  I got the driveway and most of the backyard cleared of snow.  My muscles are reminding me of this right now as this was my first snow clearing of the season.

The weather forecast is for a chance of snow each day over the next seven days.  Arctic air is predicted to invade Montana over the weekend. The temperature will keep dropping each day until early next week when the overnight low will be minus ten and the day's high temperature will be 2 above zero.

It doesn't look like this snow will be leaving until next Spring.  It is going to be a long winter.  I want my global warming back.  We haven't had any global warming in Montana all year. 

Snow

The weather has turned frightful.  Last night and this morning it rained and rained.  The wind came up overnight and this morning really blew hard as we had wind gusts to 36 mph.   In the morning the horses got freaked out for a bit and ran around the pastures here and there before coming into the corral and eventually settling down to stand in the loafing shed out of the wind.

By afternoon it started to snow.  Enough snow that it covered the ground in the valley.  The mountains got hammered.

The forecast is for more snow. I want my global warming back!

North side corral, end

I finished the north side of the corral today. (Okay, everything but replacing the gate - but who's keeping track?)

Here is the start...

And here is the end...

Here is a view looking inside...

Here is a view from the NW corner looking down the north side line...

The north side line is pretty darn straight if you ask me.  It should be what with all the double checking I did before I packed the dirt in around each tie.

As you can see from the previous photos, I still have the east side of the loading corral to rebuild and then the inner dividing fence.  That will be next year's project

Moving a pile of ties

Who needs to join a gym for exercise when one has a pile of railroad ties?  I've been getting a workout moving one of my pile of ties.

Moving and re-moving the ties wasn't part of my plan, but when

• the ties with the length I wanted were on the bottom of the pile, or
• the ties were in front of the two posts I needed to replace,

I ended up moving the ties a number of times.

Here is where my one tie pile finally ended up.

I think I finally have the ties where I want them until next year when I finish rebuilding the loading corral.

As you can see I only have one post left to replace on the north side of the corral.  Woo hoo!  Almost done!

The distance from the last tie I'll place in the ground to the loafing shed is 16 feet.  But I don't have an extra 16 ft gate, nor need one here.  This gate is 10 ft long and I would like a little longer one.  I may have an extra 12 ft gate I can use, and if so, I'll replace the gate later.

Fence twine

How did my dad dispose of hay bale twine?   By wrapping it on his fences.

While the twine patches/supports/fixes the fences, I found that cattle often would chew on the twine.  Besides being not nutritious, it can be deadly sometimes.  Dan knew of someone who lost one of his cattle after it swallowed a twine string and it got stuck inside.   The people who pasture their horses here told me yesterday they had a horse who slowly passed a string of twine.  The horse was ok, but it had the twine sticking out of its butt for a while until it was completely passed.  I've never had ill cattle from eating twine, but I have found a number of chewed up balls of twine after they had spit them out.

So... over the years I've been removing the twine from fences I rebuild or patch or just look twice at.  The loading corral had lots of baling twine and I've been removing the twine as I rebuilt each part of the corral.  Today I removed the last of the twine on the north side as it looks like I will be able to finish most of the north side fence rebuild over the next few days.

North side corral, start

I'm having so much fun working on my corral I decided to continue and work on the north side.

For the most part the weather is cooperating, and each day in the short time between the ground thawing and dark I get some fence work done.  Friday morning had a little snow so I had to wait until that melted.

Thursday was quite productive as I got three (count them - Three!) railroad ties in the ground to replace old posts.  I didn't get the dirt back in around the third tie as it was too dark to see.  For each tie I have to make sure it stands straight both north/south and east/west.  Also I have to make sure the tie is in alignment with the rest of the fence.  This is because I dig the hole somewhat larger than the tie for possible adjustment as I can't lift the tie out of the hole if things are not right.  With some effort I am just able to lift each tie just enough to slide it into the hole with a loud thud as it hits bottom.

It was good I waited until Friday to fill the dirt in as the third tie needed adjustment for fence alignment before dirt was packed in.

While Thursday saw three ties placed in the ground, Friday saw only one. 

If the weather holds - a big if - it is possible I may be able to finish the north side of the corral this year.

Here is the before and after photos after a day and half of work. Because I don't finish each day until after dark it is too late for a photo capturing that day's work.

West side corral, end

I finished work on the west side of the loading corral.

Before and after photos:

Another view:

From the inside, before and after:

Straightening a tie

The weather forecast was wrong yet again.  Surprise.  Surprise.  It did not rain today.  So I went out and checked my gopher traps and caught one more for a total of 181 for the year.  The recent rains have added up and the ground is wet even down into the pocket gopher tunnels near the ground's surface.

I checked on the river and surprised three whitetail deer mid afternoon.  I had seen on the USGS website that the river level rose from 79 to 118 one day last week.  It was not due to the rains and is a little bit of a mystery.  I believe it was because the BNSF railroad finished this year's river pollution sediment reclamation project about that time.  Apparently this year they built a diversion in the river so they could excavate a polluted section of the river bed way upstream near Whitefish.  I would have thought the diversion still let the river completely flow but it must have also acted a mini-dam.  So the river is now higher than normal for this time of the year.

The elk are still around.  Kelly saw several last Friday and therefore now has gotten an elk tag.  Now for them to show up again on my property.

I decided to straighten one of the railroad ties I had put in last week.  It was one I had put in the ground before getting the idea to use a level to make sure the ties stood straight.  This tie had a slight lean when you looked at it a certain way.  I know, I know.  Being a perfectionist again.

How to straighten the tie now that it is in the ground?  I took my pickup and put it into four wheel drive and bumped the tie a few times.  Now the level says it is straight.

I found a few more boards in the lengths I need and nailed them to the corral.  I still need a 9 ft and a 9'4" two-by-four board and - no surprise - that is proving elusive.  I have one more wood pile to search.

In the meantime I nailed a number of the boards completely to the railroad ties.  At least until it got too dark to accurately hit the nail on the heads.  Tomorrow is another day.

West side corral, corner

I finished the rebuild of the west side of the loading corral and turned the corner to the north side.

Of course the horses were curious as to what I was doing.

After I removed the corral's old corner post I got an idea.

Uh-oh.

The fence that divides the north pasture in two goes from the west side of the corral to the north fence passing a yard or so west of the hay shed.

Here is a view of the gate in the south side of the corral, the hay shed, and faintly in the background you can see the fence that goes just west of the hay shed.  I had already removed the corral's NW corner post.

This gap between the fence and the hay shed is annoying as it is just large enough for livestock to go in, and of course they do. My goal - when I eventually rebuild the fence - is to move the fence even with the end of the hay shed and eliminate the gap.

The idea I got a few days ago was not to angle or bend the fence from the corral corner to the hay shed, but keep the fence straight all the way to the corral.  Instead of replacing the corral's old corner post with a railroad tie I would move the "corner" to a point four feet east, and in line with the end of the hay shed.  (Note the three vs. four feet is because I believe the dividing fence wasn't straight to begin with.)  This would bend the corral's corner instead of having the corral's west and north sides meet at a 90 degree angle.

Bending the corner would also solve two other problems:

1. the south side of the loading corral is made up of eight foot sections with the last (west most) section five feet in length.  I didn't chose it; that is the original length of the corral.  My solution to the five foot section was to make that section a second corral gate.  If I wanted the railroad tie's placement on the corral's north side to match the south side's tie placement I would need another five foot section, this time not as a gate as I don't need a third gate.  If I moved the corral's corner four feet to the east and then make the next section nine feet, my north/south railroad tie alignment problem would quickly be solved.
 
2. When cattle don't want to be herded in the corral sometimes they stand with their heads in a corner.  This can make herding more difficult, especially when this only leaves their rears to work with to get them to move - and one doesn't want to stand behind agitated cattle!  No corner, no problem.

Bending the corner would lengthen the section from eight feet to a little over nine feet but I did have a few boards that long.  I just had to search for them - naturally - at the bottoms of my wood piles. (Where else would they be?! )

Placement of the railroad tie for the northern end of the corner was challenging.  I had to find the sweet spot to satisfy four things, all of which favored a different location:

1. the west end of the hay shed which was the west most point,
 
2. the south side railroad tie which was an eastern point,
 
3. the length of the boards for the corner section, and
 
4. the length of the next section on the north side that had to be over eight feet in order to get the rest of the north side in alignment, but not too much longer as I didn't have many longer boards.

The tie alignment probably doesn't matter in reality, but to me, atheistically, it does matter.  And this is something I will have to be happy with for a really long time, if not forever.  Those railroad ties should last many decades.


I settled on a spot for the new tie and overall it seems to be a good fit, though I wonder if I should have moved the tie west three or four inches to be in perfect alignment with the west side of the hay shed.  At least judging from one or more angles when I look at the tie and hay shed together.

Here is a view after I got the tie into the ground at the end of Thursday.  The mash-up of boards is so the horses didn't get into the NE pasture overnight.  The boards end where the old post used to be.  And yes, this is how late I often work.

See what I mean about the tie perhaps being a little too much to the east?

It was dark when I had finished so the photos are not the best. I'll try to take more photos once the rain quits. It started raining Saturday night (one day earlier than forecast) and is suppose to rain, and maybe snow, much of this week.

Estate farm auction

Thursday afternoon I went to an estate farm auction near Bigfork.    I think this was the first auction I've been to since June.  There haven't been many auctions in the Valley this year.

The auction was fine.  It started at 1 pm and didn't have too much junk.  Also the auctioneers often grouped stuff and sold it that way.  And they went in $5 increments, by $50 they were in $10 increments, and often tried $25 increments for bigger stuff.  No $2.50 increments.   That sped the process along as it priced people out quicker.

I was out of there after 4 pm.  I think the auctioneers finished with the household stuff and the auction around that time.

I bought 3 railroad ties that were 8 and 1/2 feet long.  I thought six wooden posts next to the ties went with the lot as the auctioneer started out describing the next items as the posts and ties.  I missed when he settled on the lot as just the ties. I didn't find out the posts weren't included until after I won the bid and the auctioneer then auctioned the six posts next.  So I merely got a good deal and not a great deal.  The ties are in very good condition.

The mix-up threw me off so shortly later when the auctioneer moved to another spot and auctioned 14 older railroad ties next to a pile of scrap iron I didn't bid them up and they went cheap  ($25!)   Later I kicked myself for not bidding on them as I know now right where I would put them.

The other items I was interested in went higher than I wanted to pay.  The mostly 10 ft and 12 ft gates were not my ideal sizes (either 8 ft, 14 ft or 16 ft) and they went for $90 a gate.   Half the gates were damaged.  Even though those gates sold for less, not cheap enough to make it worthwhile to try to fix the gates.

There were a number of other (good!) gates on various corrals and fences.  Even though the owner is deceased, and no one lives there now, horses are pastured in an upper field.  Therefore those gates weren't for sale.  Darn.

I bid on three other lots (30 posts, barb wire stays, and barb wire staples) but was outbid.  A few other items I didn't even bid on as the auctioneer threw several buckets of stuff together and the bidding started high as the other items were in demand.

The weather was very nice, which cuts both ways.  With only a few nice days left in the weather forecast, I could have used this day to work on and finish projects around the ranch.

So yet another frustrating time at an auction.  At least the auction moved quick and I only spent a half day there and not most of the day.


This is the owner's 'barn'.  He had two John Deere tractors (models 2720 and 2020) which sold for $18,000 and $5500, along with a round baler and swather which sold for $5000 and $5700.  With such nice and expensive equipment, you'd think he'd have a good place to store his machinery.  His old - and very rusty - stock trailer only sold for $1100.

Bale feeders, water troughs, and squeeze chute up for auction with the Swan Mountain Range in the background.

Painting gutters

The weather is excellent right now.  The temp is in the 50s under a clear sky with no wind.  The forecast is for the good weather to end on Saturday so I only have a few good days left for outside work.

Wednesday I re-painted the windmill blades, then painted my house's rain gutters and downspouts.  Or at least the backside of the gutters as I have to let them dry before hanging them back up and painting their front side.