Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Morning snow

This morning I woke up to snow.  I guess since March came in "like a lamb" it is to be expected it will leave 'like a lion".


The snow was most melted and gone by the afternoon.

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Putting a harrow together

Today I reassembled my harrow pieces.  The past few years have been tough on it.  Of the three pieces only two really remain as the oldest piece is falling apart.  Below is how the pieces looked at the start of last year's harrow work.


Now here is how they look after I put it together this year.

Last summer I picked up the front bar at an auction and this gives a better thing to attach the pieces to.  I hope multiple attachments to the bar will help the remaining pieces hold together better.

I added a few railroad ties on top to give the harrow a "bite" into the ground.  I had time to drag it around the hayfield a couple times.  I already need to reattach part of the trailing piece tomorrow.


I think this should do the job in smoothing out pocket gopher dirt mounds.

Saturday, March 27, 2010

Spring chores

Looks like another nice weekend.  Mostly sunny with a temperature in the mid 50s.  Warm enough that when working this afternoon I didn't need a coat.  Spring is in the air.

No hiking this weekend as Patti had to work and Joyce and I decided to wait till next week to go hiking.

A little of this and a little of that for chores.  I put all (seven) of my pocket gopher traps out in the pasture today.  I hadn't caught any more pocket gophers today with the three traps I already had in the pasture and I noticed more fresh dirt mounds around the pasture.  Still no signs of the regular gophers.

I stacked some pine tree branches that broken off this past winter in the south pasture.  I already have a pile of dead branches from other years and I added these to it.  I left other branches that broke off the tree near the pile.  The pile is high and the recent branches are long and thick and I decided to leave them lay near the pile instead of trying to toss them up on the pile.  I'll do something with them another day.

I cut up some boards for burning in my wood stove.  And gathered up some loose pieces of wood for burning.

I sharpened nine more two-by-fours and pounded them in the ground to mark more tree stump locations.  That makes 29 stumps marked.  A rough estimate is another twenty stumps left to mark.

I found another old tree stump hole.  Fortunately there was a hill (bump) nearby where I could get dirt to fill the hole.  Hopefully that is the last of the old tree stump holes.

I got my harrow out.  It is so beat up and parts of it are broken.  I need to reconfigure the pieces in a new way.  Tomorrow's project.

That's it.  Just an average day.

Friday, March 26, 2010

Thursday, March 25, 2010

Signs of Spring

The birds are out in full force now that the snow is mostly gone.  Lots of robins are everywhere.

The other day two flickers were courting in the box elder tree I had trimmed south of the house last Fall.  Flickers have made a nest in that tree trunk the past years but as the holes were getting larger I boarded them up after I trimmed the tree last Fall.  Since the flickers were busy courting in that tree I wonder if they made or found a new hole in the tree?  One flicker was making lots of noise and wagging her tail feathers while the other flicker watched her and me. Or was it the other way around between the male and female? I think the one bird wanted some privacy before he or she made their move.

Then today I found a flicker in my barn's attic.  It was at the one window trying to get out.  I had to get a ladder and open up the attic door so the bird could fly out before it broke the window.  The attic has a few openings under the roof eve and it seems each year one or more flicker climbs up the barn wall and squeezes through the opening to get into the attic only to forget how it got into the attic.  *sigh*  At least the bird didn't break any windows this year.

The tulips around the house are starting to come out of the ground.

The potato trucks are now hauling seed potatoes for planting. The semi trucks that haul potatoes for planting in Washington have started arriving and departing this week.

I am up to nine pocket gophers trapped this year.  I checked the pasture for signs of regular gophers as I am sure there were one or two I didn't catch last year.    No signs of them yet though I did see a couple old holes near their area.

Yarrow weeds are greening up.  I seen them in the middle pasture where I didn't get them sprayed before they went dormant with the dry hot weather late last Summer.  This year I'll get them!

Tuesday I filled in the holes from the tree stumps I had burned last year.  I filled in six of them.  Granted I had half filled them in last year, but still it was a lot of work to completely fill them in.  I attempted to fill in the hole where I burnt out an ant pile but I discovered part of a tree stump on the side of the hole.  *sigh*   Tree stumps never end.  I dug around the tree stump exposing it to air for drying.  It will make a nice small bonfire for when Tammy visits me in May.

I pounded 20 two-by-four boards next to tree stumps to mark their location for avoidance with the harrow and for later digging.  I ran out of two-by-four boards.  I'll have to cut points on more boards for marking more tree stumps.

Wednesday I filled in more tree stump holes/depressions.  This time the holes were from years ago which I never got around to smoothing out.  I worked on four of these.  Two went well.  One I found part of a rotted stump and roots all of which I was able to dig out.  Then at the fourth and deepest hole I spotted the top of a stump.   Ahhh...!!  That is why I never filled in that hole yet.   I had burnt that humongous stump over two years back in 2003 and 2004 or 2005.

I tried to dig the stump out hoping it also was rotting.  Nope.  It was an old western larch stump and I think it takes a hundred years or more to rot.  It was solid and looked as fresh as the day the tree died.

So today I dug and cut the stump out.  I didn't save it for a bonfire as I wanted to finally be rid of it and move on to other stumps.


Then before I could fill in the hole I found more of the tree stump hidden in the dirt. 


Okay.. bye, bye stump! (after some hard work)  Note the dirt from this stump went to fill in the hole where I had dug and cut out the other part of the stump.


Here are the remnants of the stump.  See how after many, many years of being dead, and after five years of being burnt by me, the stump still looks fresh. That's a Western Larch (Tamarack) for you.  Also note the area around the stump was rocky and I almost filled the wheelbarrow with rocks.

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Tree branch hauling

Monday I hauled some tree branches out to a low spot in my pasture.  Bob and Jan's son had trimmed a number of their trees so I had a full trailer and pickup load of those branches.  They seemed more than what they were as many branches were from fruit trees and those branches had side branches to create a 'ball' effect.

Over winter a heavy wet snow snapped quite a number of pine tree branches on my place. I cleared the branches from the front yard and the north pasture.  As you can see I had a full pickup load just of pine branches.  Tall trees make for long branches. Those branches go all the way in the pickup box to the cab. It was a balancing act to carry the long branches and place them in the pickup.

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Face in green moss

While at Bowman Lake on Saturday I took a few photos of the green moss in the creek where the creek leaves Bowman Lake.

Can you see the face in the moss?


The face's haircut reminds me of either a Beatles cut or a Medieval cut.  You can see the eyes, nose, mouth and chin.  The mouth is open.  The eyes seem to look at you, though the face and nose is pointed slightly to the right.  The face is just to the left of the large rock.

Or am I imagining it?

Saturday, March 20, 2010

Rake, pipe and missing pliers

Over the past three days I have spent much of each day raking my corral.  Since I had more cattle for a longer period in the corral last May I had lots and lots of dried cow pies all around the corral.  And in that I hadn't raked the corral for a few years now you'd agree it was past time to do so.


In the last photo above notice the small mound of dirt.  When raking I discovered a plastic pipe in the ground.  The end was open (with dirt) and looked to have been struck by a lawn mower or something similar. Wrapped around the pipe was part of a heating tape.

I dug down a yard or so until the pipe curved to the south and the heating tape ended.  I am not positive where the pipe went as I didn't want to dig a trench to find out. I suspected it went to the well near my cattle's water trough though I could not see a plastic pipe near it.  Why the pipe came out of the ground at this spot in the corral is a mystery.

With my hand rake I raked the entire corral.  I dumped many wheelbarrow loads of manure and dead grass in three lows spots in the corral and also some places in my garden.  Dried cow manure is a good fertilizer.

I raked so much that Friday I broke the rake I had bought last year (or the year before?)  I broke the metal rake not the handle.  Fortunately I had bought several old rake heads at an auction last year so I was able to replace broken the rake head.

While raking the back corral I found the pair of pliers I had lost back in May of 2007 when my uncles and aunts from Washington State visited me.  My aunts and I had worked on my corral fence and I had lost one pair of pliers.  As much as I searched that year and next I never found the pliers.  Last year in the Spring I had burnt the dead grass along the corral fence and kept an eye out for the pliers and never found them.  I gave up looking thinking I had lost them somewhere else in the yard

Friday as I raked the cow pies I looked up and the sun was just right and I noticed the pliers hanging in the fence. What?!  I had been by the fence a million times the past three years and had already raked by the corral near where the pliers hung.  It is a mystery why I never saw the pliers until now.  Naturally after being out in the elements all these years they have a little rust and a weathered look.

Friday, March 19, 2010

Antler gate

A different kind of gate.


Another kind of "fence".

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Census work and dogs

There are a few challenges in delivering census questionnaires.   In this post I will talk about one challenge: dogs.

I didn't have any real problems with dogs.  With that I mean dog bites.  In my training class I met a woman who worked for the census back in 2009 to map addresses was bitten by a dog.  Then earlier this week I met a woman who was recently bitten by a small dog as she delivered a census questionnaire.

I did encounter:
  • friendly dogs who snuck up on me and greeted me when I opened my car door.  Surprise!
  • dogs (and one cat) who got into my car when I left the door open while talking to the home owner.
  • dogs who brought me sticks and wanted to play fetch.
  • a dog who brought me a Frisbee and wanted to pay catch.  I did toss him the Frisbee for a few minutes and he was good in catching it.
  • dogs that peed on my car tires.  I think three of the four wheels were marked.  I didn't wash them as dogs who approached me by the car suddenly shifted their attention from me to smelling my car tires.  Even with all my driving through water and snow the dog urine seemed to have stayed on my car wheels.
  • dogs that had a loud or piercing bark.   They tended to be small dogs and constantly barked.  The owners seemed to be accustomed to the bark and only tried to shush their dogs after I started to wince from the sound or would ask them to repeat their answer as I couldn't hear it. I thought my ear drums would burst from one dog's barking. 
  • one house had six to eight dogs in the yard to the main house entrance.  They were all Siberian Huskies and all were quite excited to see me, jumping around and barking constantly.  I went around to the other house door and found another six to eight dogs inside the house running around from window to window to sliding glass door to bark at me.  No surprise that the house looked to be a mess inside.
  • two vicious looking and sounding dogs inside a house with a glass door.  My, why large teeth they had. 
  • a brusque woman who said if I came back not to get out of my car if her dogs were in the yard.
  • one dog I kept an eye on as it half slunk and occasionally bared its teeth as I walked to the front house door.
  • and the two dogs in the following photos.  I left the census questionnaire on the gate.  It took them 6 seconds to get from the house to the gate.  I guess they took their time as I wasn't inside the gate.  The lighter colored dog has a chain trailing it.

Saturday, March 13, 2010

Gopher start

I trapped my first pocket gophers of the year.  I set a couple traps before I started my census work a few weeks ago, and now that I am done with delivering census questionnaires, I checked those traps today.  Both traps had a dead gopher.  Yes!

Trap number one had the gopher I was trying to trap last year to be my 250th pocket gopher.  He wasn't my 250th, but instead my first.

My second pocket gopher and trap were buried in dirt.  It is Spring and the pocket gophers are paired up for breeding and babies.  I cleared and left the trap for the other gopher.

Friday, March 12, 2010

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Arrows fly

One of the sights on my census route Tuesday.  (Yup!  I drove slow on his driveway.)

Tuesday, March 09, 2010

Snow and census

After a long period of beautiful Spring-like weather, last night it rained and today it snowed.

I may have mentioned that I got a census job.  I deliver census forms out in the countryside.  The census doesn't mail the forms to post office boxes, and since a number of small towns in our part of the country only have P.O. Boxes and no home delivery, we have to hand deliver the forms everywhere except (I believe) the city of Kalispell.  My form was hand delivered last week.  

Today's snow made going up and down the steep narrow driveways "interesting". Sometimes I had to take a run at the driveway to make it up. One time I started slipping sideways towards the edge as my car struggled to get up a steep driveway only a car width wide. Yikes!! But I always made it. Some driveways are narrower than some forest service logging roads I have been on - and that's saying a lot. I guess some people don't have money left over after building their large log house mansion on top of their small mountain/hill to build a better driveway.  Else they only visit their house in the summer and don't mind a narrow, steep and winding driveway.

I guess a new hire went off the road on Monday down in the Swan Valley - and that was before today's snow.

When I get time I'll try to upload some icy road photos from when the weather was nice.  A few times I parked my car at what I thought was the top of an icy driveway in order to walk the rest of the way.  Two different times when I leaned against my car for a moment as I was getting ready for my walk, the car began to slide down the hill until I grabbed it and stopped it from sliding further.

The gloomier weather today appears to affected the mood of people I met. After some interesting and sane people the past few days, today a larger number of people were grumpier and anti-Census. Sometimes I think the Flathead valley has a larger number of 'idiots' (for a lack of a better word at this late hour) than other areas. Very short sighted people.

This morning I had a discussion with one guy who planned to only fill out the question about the number of people in his household and asked me what would happen if he only answered that question. It is not in my job description to "sell" or explain the census questionnaire as the form has a toll free number to call if the person has questions.  I didn't know the answer to his question other than I think the census will later send a person to talk with him in an effort to get the rest of the form answered.  I believe in the census and tried to save the government money from sending another person by explaining the census's importance.   I don't think I changed his mind unless he chews on what I said and later decides to fill out all of the form.

On sunnier days for other people in a similar mindset I might have have made more of a dent in changing their perceptions.  By the end of my talk I did have one guy apologize for being so rude to me when I first approached him. He even apologized twice.

I do find that the 'anti' women are less receptive to a discussion. I don't know why.  They probably don't like some man disagreeing with them. Out of the hundreds of forms I have delivered I've only had two people slam the door in my face when I tried to deliver the census form and they were both women. I barely got the words out that I was from the census when they slammed the doors. And one time when I held the envelope up and wouldn't go away the lady then yelled at me "This is a free country and I don't have to take the census!" before closing the curtains to her sliding glass door. So much for my ego and thoughts of charming the ladies.

Monday, March 08, 2010

Yellow bug

I guess this is where Herbie the Love Bug went when he was put out to pasture.  Sad.  At least his hubcaps are still shiny.

Sunday, March 07, 2010

Red Pontiac

A beautiful old car I came across today.  Love the hood ornament.