New used harrow sections

Tuesday, after attending an auction in Whitefish, I got two old spike tooth harrow sections that John said he would give me.

John had them in the tall grass in a back pasture. He drove his small tractor back to load them but I was able to lift them into the pickup myself.

The sections are old and have seen lots of wear, but are no worse than the two sections I currently have.  These two sections will buy me more time until I find a better harrow.

The harrow sections will be used next year as I have the cow pies and pocket gopher mounds in the hayfield to break up and level next year.


I showed John the Victor Blackhole pocket gopher traps I use.  He - like all ranchers out here - has a pocket gopher problem and he has had little success in trapping them with his traps.

Pheasant Road auction

Monday evening I attended an auction on Pheasant Road near Columbia Falls.  The date and time were unusual as most auctions are held on Saturday, starting in the morning.  In addition to being a Monday auctions the start time was 5 pm.  Fortunately the auctioneer moved things along well and the auction was done by 8:30pm.

The auction was held in a large horse arena.  It appears the woman who owned the property, stables and horse arena was reluctantly holding the auction.  She also had the property up for sale.  The economy is still bad in the Flathead Valley and it seems as if less people have horses.  When one guy I had been talking with looked for her towards the end of the auction, he was told she had left because seeing her stuff sold was hard on her.

While horse feeders, tack, gates, etc. was advertized, lots of household stuff was also auctioned.  For once I arrived to an auction on time and had time to kill as what I was interested in didn't sell till near the end of the auction.

Fortunately while I waited I had a lawn chair I had brought along. I got so relaxed I started to fall asleep.  A couple items that perked my interest was a 19" flat screen TV that sold for $27.50.   They said it worked.  Also they had a few items where no one would bid.  When they tossed in a large pipe wrench I became interested.  However I was so relaxed that by the time I considered taking a chance the pipe wrench was good, they tossed in a large framed mirror and other people started bidding.

I almost bought another 16 ft gate.  A flat metal gate was auctioned and, while I wasn't really interested, the only bid was for $10. Way cheap! So I began to bid.  I dropped out when I had to bid $27.50.  I didn't really want the gate.

I did successfully buy two metal 8 ft long gates and four metal 12 ft long corral panels.  I only wanted the two gates but I won the bidding at $25 each.  That was cheap so I took all of them.  The gates and panels are a lighter weight steel than the green HW brand but they will do the job, especially at that price.  I had never heard of the brand - Farmview - before.

The auction also sold green gates and corral panels.  Usually that means the HW brand, but there were also some green Farmview panels mixed in.  I was interested in the one 10 ft metal HW gate but I didn't bid.  I had talked with John who was interested in the green panels and also the harrows at the auction.  John said he had a few old spike tooth harrows in his back pasture and that as he didn't want them I could have them.  So, I didn't bid against John.  I also thought I would have a chance to bid on the gate later as John wasn't interested in it. Another man outbid John at $50 and the only thing he took was the gate.   The auctioneer offered second chance to John at $50 to take the panels and he did.  Later he discovered that a few of the green panels were not the HW brand.

John also didn't get a chance to bid on the harrow as the auctioneers couldn't find all the sections of the harrow.


Later the lady who I bid against for the 16 ft gate saw me carry my panels our to my truck.  She didn't realize that I had bid against her for the gate.  She told me she knew a man who was selling some corral panels to her for $35.  She didn't know how many he had, but if he had more than what she wanted, she would call me to let me know there was some left.  I wasn't planning on gathering corral panels, but if the price is right I could find a use for them.

I already partially unloaded the panels before I took the photo.

The four corral panels I had bought.  This and the preceding photo were taken at same time - one photo with flash and one without.

Fence fixing for the cattle to south pasture

Dan and I settled on how and when we are selling our cattle.  Next week it will be.  In the meantime I decided to let the cattle back into the south pasture one more time.  While the hayfield still has green grass, and perhaps enough grass to feed the cattle until they leave, it is better to rotate them to a new pasture.  Especially now that the river water level has dropped low.  The lowland area that was underwater this past Spring now has tall lush grass.  Instead of the hayfield's pale dry looking Summertime green it is Springtime dark green in the lower area of the south pasture.  It will be a treat for the cattle.

The downside to the low river level is that the cattle can 'river walk'.  So I checked the fences along parts of the river - mine and the neighbor's.  With the very high water this year dirt around some of the fence posts eroded away and needed to be fixed.  Also those darn deer broke the top barb wire of one fence and I used a fence stretcher to repair it.  

Why did I fix my neighbor's fences?  One neighbor has had no cattle for many years and no interest in maintaining the remote fence.  The other neighbor never put his cattle across the river this year and therefore did not maintain his fence.  It is easier for me to maintain the fences than chase cattle when they get away from my pasture.  My pasture has enough good grass to satisfy the cattle - but I know cattle, and sometimes they get an itch to wander.

The photo is of one of my neighbor's fence that I maintain.   Over the years the posts have become more of boards I had added to replace rotted fence posts.  The fence is simple as its purpose is to keep my cattle from coming up the river bank onto the neighbor's land.

The river is low and the grass near the river is very tall.

I also moved the cattle's salt blocks to the south pasture.

Strawberry grass

After I weeded my strawberry patch the end of July it didn't take long for grass to reappear. Just add water.

Tuesday night I spent an hour starting to re-weed it.  This time, since I am not fighting tall strands of grass, I am able to follow the grass roots under the dirt to remove more of the roots.

While I was weeding, two deer came to the fence between the hayfield and yard and started hissing at me over in the fruit tree and garden area.  Even when I stood up they didn't want to leave.  Only when I walked towards them did they leave.  Minutes later when I was back at weeding they returned and hissed at me for a minute before leaving.  They want into the fruit tree and garden area to search for fallen apples. It is that time of year again.  Moving closer to Fall.

I am feeding the fallen apples to my cattle so each evening I pick up the fallen apples.  The other night the cattle were in the middle of the hayfield so I left an apple near their water trough.  Later after dark I heard a deer run off when I walked in the back yard.  I checked and the deer had eaten the apple in addition to drinking the cattle's water and licking the cattle's salt.  #@$% deer! 

Chimney cleaning

Monday I performed my annual chimney cleaning.  Nothing like waiting for a hot day to clean the chimney and the pipes that run from the wood stove to the chimney. Part of why I wait till mid summer is that I clean the wood stove pipes in a pasture and, now that the horses have eaten down the grass, I have shorter grass while I do the cleaning.

Cleaning the chimney is not so bad as I have a chimney brush to clean it.  I also use a scraper on what I can reach from the top and from the bottom in order to really clean things.  Cleaning the wood stove pipe is the harder thing to do.  I take the pipe apart and, using wire brushes and a scraper, scrub the sections of pipe clean.

Naturally I get filthy.  I went for a swim in the river to clean off.  Nice to do on a hot day.

Here is a view from the house roof of the willow tree I trimmed earlier this year.  I found a photo of the willow tree taken a  few years ago to get a before-and-after view.

View east from the house roof.

Mowing in the NE pasture

Sunday I changed the oil on my lawn mower, then mowed in the NE pasture until I ran out of gasoline.

A difference I notice between cattle and horses is that cattle eat the grass evenly and horses don't.  They leave clumps of grass.  Also horses will select an area to be their bathroom and then don't eat from that area.

Now that the horses are out of the NE pasture I decided to mow a few areas because the grass is mostly brown and dead.  Some areas are so dry that if one dropped a match they would be hard pressed to put the fire out.  As some of the tall grass left by the horses were around my buildings I decided to mow around my buildings.

The one area with green grass by a building was used by the horses as their bathroom area so I mowed in that area to break up the manure.

This was the area with the most dry grass.  I took the photo halfway through mowing the area.

The bathroom area behind the livestock's loafing shed.

How it looked when I was done for the day. I don't plan to mow the entire NE pasture, though once I get more gasoline I plan to mow a little behind the buildings on the right side.

Mowing the fruit tree and garden area

Now that the horses are finished eating the grass in my fruit tree and garden area I mowed the leftover grass to give the area a cleaner look.  This was harder than normal as the grass was dried and tougher than normal.  Also hindering the mowing was some of the the grass was longer than the mower deck and stiff enough that the mower's suction didn't suck it into the blade to be cut.

This was dusty dirty work and my lawnmower quit when I was mowing and would not re-start.  I discovered my air cleaner was filthy and solid was dirt and dust.  Shaking and scraping the dust and dirt off the cleaner still left the air cleaner looking dirty.  So I ended up buying a new air cleaner.

The lawn mower still didn't want to run.  I took out the spark plug to find it black.  I scraped the carbon off the plug using sandpaper.  Cleaning the plug did the trick as my lawn mower now started.  After cleaning the spark plug I also found that the mower ran much longer on a tank of gas,

Next up: changing the mower's oil.

Friday night sunset

Here are a few photos from Friday night's sunset.

Aluminum cans

Thursday I took my aluminum in for recycling.  In the Flathead Valley, during the week of the county fair, the local recyclers pay extra for aluminum cans. One place said they are paying 10 cents a pound extra over what the price will be next week. One recycler paid 60 cents a pound and the smaller competitor paid 61 cents.  Since I was going to be on the west side of town Thursday I went to the 61 cents a pound place.

It has been quite a few years since I last took aluminum cans in to be recycled so I had plenty of them in among my tool shed's "treasure pile". I don't drink much pop, and no beer, so the vast majority of those cans are ones I had picked out of the ditch up and down the road from the ranch in my effort to keep the ditches clean of garbage.  People toss a lot of beer cans out of their vehicle as they drive by.

I had a few other aluminum odd and ends.  Yes, Curt, the lawn chair frame is in the photo below.  I took it apart more to get rid of the rivets which I don't think were aluminum.

I also took a little bit of copper wire.

I had 65 pounds of aluminum cans.  About four pounds of other aluminum (for which one gets less money).  I had two pounds of clean copper and two pounds of dirty copper.  Dirty copper is copper with solder or has been burned to remove the plastic casing on the copper.

In the end I got $49.85 for my efforts.  Already I have a couple of aluminum cans to start my collection all over again.  My "treasure pile" is less, but I have a long way to go to clean it up and organize it.

Horses of a different color

The horse owners stopped by Tuesday.  They brought a block of mineral salt for their horses to lick on.  The owners hadn't seen the horses for a while and the wife felt that the two fillies' colors have changed slightly.  Since I see the horses every day I never noticed.

The brown one is a slightly different shade of brown and maybe she has more white spot/streaks on her hindquarters. 

The grey filly is also a slightly different shade of grey has more small black spots on her hindquarters.

Fence, cattle, ties, etc.

Not too much going on here.   The cattle abused another fence.  I am not sure if they broke the post or caused it to lean.  I think the poles are holding up a broken post.

I didn't feel like taking the poles off and the post out of the ground, so I pounded a few boards in the ground around the post for support and nailed everything together.  The fence is solid now.  It may not look the best...

Most of the times the cattle are nice to one another.  Here one of my heifers is licking another of my heifers.  Then later they started fighting.  Go figure!

Part of a stack of railroad ties fell over.  I don't know if the horses rubbed against the stack when they were in the pasture and caused it to fall over, or whether the stack fell on its own.  I re-stacked the ties.  Because some of the ties are not completely square, I put some small boards under some ties to prevent the stack from wobbling.

I am almost done trapping pocket gophers in my pastures.  Today I finished the south pasture.  I still have two traps out in the middle pasture as some pocket gophers moved back in after I thought I had cleared it.

I'm still spraying herbicide on my weeds.

Summer rain

We had three rain showers, with a little thunder and lightning, Wednesday evening.  The nice thing is the rain waited until I finished my river fence rebuild.

It was a nice rain and was more than just settling the dust.  We needed the rain as it was getting dry here and some of the grass was getting brown.

The second shower briefly had a little graupel with the rain.  The horses ducked under the cover of a pine tree, then moved under an apple tree that had more protection.  The cattle, with thicker skins, didn't care and continued to eat in the hayfield.

The last rain shower had much heavier rain.  Even the cattle sought shelter under trees.  As there are no trees in the hayfield, the cattle found shelter under tree branches that overhung the hayfield.  None of the trees along the house were large enough for the entire herd so they had to use three trees for protection from the heavy rain.

It has been a long time since I seen water gushing from my house's rain gutters.

Cleaning and cattle

Today I cleaned and scrubbed the water trough in the corral.  This is the third time I've cleaned it this year.  Normally I clean the trough in the Spring and again at the end of the year.  The horses get the water dirtier than when cattle use it.  Not only do the horses drink from it, they also use the water to rinse their mouths.  They stand over the trough letting the green water from their mouth fall back into the trough.  *sigh*

So I cleaned the trough again today.

Here is how the trough looks clean.  Take a good look because it won't last long looking so clean.

Another heifer is in heat and has got it bad.  Lots of looking across the road at the neighbor's cattle.  Lots of wandering around the pasture. Lots of restlessness. The rest of the herd is starting to wise up to these horny heifers.  They don't always follow the heifer in heat around, but still they do more walking and running than usual.

This afternoon the herd took their siesta from the hot sun in the shade of a tree.  The heifer in heat laid out in the sun away from the herd.

I don't know if it is because the heifers are getting older and more mature as it seems that the larger heifers are the ones most affected by going into heat, or if the recent hot weather is intensifying their monthly cycle, but the heifers never have been so crazy in "love" until this past week.

My nut tree lives

If you remember back when I had let the horses into my yard, one horse ate all the leaves off my small young English Walnut tree.

I have good news.  The tree lives.  The leaves have grown back.

New critter on doorbell

What is with my house's doorbell and insects this year?   Saturday I found another insect on my doorbell. If they are trying to ring my doorbell for me to let them in the house, they are mistaken.

In heat, rain showers, log splitting, etc

One of Dan's heifers - Number 17 - is in heat.  This morning, instead of taking her siesta by the house with the rest of the herd, she walked to the fence by the road occasionally bellowing.  That got the herd up and they cut their siesta very short to follow her.  Number 17 paced along the fence looking at the neighbor's cattle across the road.  Even though Number 10 followed her everywhere either placing his head on her rump or trying to hump her, neither he or any of the other of Dan's "boys" have what it takes: balls.  All my cattle are girls.  However the neighbor's cattle don't have the balls either either to satisfy her.

By the afternoon she settled back down, started eating again and stuck closer to the herd.  She'll pass out of heat in a day or two.  The sooner the better.  Horny heifers can cause trouble.


I didn't get any weed spraying done Friday as we had off-and-on light rain showers with occasional slow thunder.  I wish we got more than the "settle the dust"' showers, but as it has been warm and dry I'll take anything I can get.  Off in the distance it looked like it rained harder.  They also got a few lightning strikes.


I still am catching pocket gophers.  To the best of my knowledge I have cleared the north and middle pastures, and have cleared 3/4 of the south pasture.  I have trapped 67 so far this year.  When I look across at the my southern neighbor's field I see dirt mounds, so there is the source for future pocket gophers.

When I walk across the pastures to check on the traps I also knock the seed heads off the Canadian Thistle weeds and have most of them clipped.  That will give me a chance to 'catch up' with the herbicide before the thistle goes to seed.


I spent a little time splitting some of my logs for firewood.  I had some arborvitae logs, and even though they have been drying for a couple years now, I find the wood very dense.  They are near rock-like except my axe does sink a very little bit into the wood.  I've had to cut some of my logs in half yet again to have a chance to split the wood.  Even then I often have to use a sledgehammer to push the splitting axe through the wood.  I think I am through all the arborvitae logs, thank goodness.


Kyle hasn't had a chance to check his entire bone-yard for a water pump for me.  Apparently his dad had taken and used the pump he had in mind for me.


One of my neighbors asked me to keep an eye out for his eyeglasses when I ride my bicycle along the road.  The neighbor had set his glasses on his pickup before driving to another neighbor's place and now can't find his glasses.

Water trough pump: start

Kyle and I finally synched up and he came to work on my water trough pump Thursday evening. I never had used this pump since coming here as the power from the barn wasn't enough to run the pump.  But after Larry and Curt re-wired my barn, when I ran the pump it would run for about 15 seconds then turn off without pumping any water.

The main problem in fixing the pump was the size of the work area.  The area was the size of one person.  However one could not bend over much when in the concrete casing.

We debated taking the top casing off to reach the pump but, as you can kinda tell from the photo, that involved digging down a ways, then moving a heavy concrete casing.

So I climbed down in the casing and unscrewed the metal clamps holding the hoses onto the pump.  Then with a chain we pulled the pump up out of the basing. 

Once we got the pump out of the casing we immediately saw the problem with the pump.  Or the two problems as you can see in the photo.  The pump chamber itself was broken.  And the small water pressure holding tank was broken.  But the pump motor works.

Kyle is going to check his bone-yard for a small pump that can do the job.  This pump is an old McDonald-Douglas 1/3 horsepower pump.  I thought McDonald-Douglas only made airplanes, but apparently they used to make pumps too.

The pipe going into the ground seems solid, but time will tell if it has any holes above the water line in the ground.


While here, Kyle fixed the main well pump's wiring.  When he replaced the bad water pressure tank last year, he also moved the pump's on/off switch in the pump house to an easier location to reach.  Unfortunately last Winter I discovered that the on/off switch now also turned on/off the pump house's electrical outlet into which I plugged a space heater during the Winter.  I couldn't turn off the pump without also turning off the heater.

Fixing Bob's irrigation spigot

Today I helped fix one of Bob and Jan's irrigation spigots.  Instead of coming up from the ground and watering the lawn and flowers, water bubbled up. The flowers were dying now that we haven't had rain for a week or so. I dug up dirt and mud around the spigot and found it wasn't connected to the underground pipe.

Bob and Jan got a metal clamp and when I fitted the spigot hose back onto the underground pipe connection, I tightened the clamp to keep the spigot on the pipe.

It sounds easy enough but it took some time and work to complete.  With Bob's health problems he couldn't help much beyond giving me advice.

Even though the connection was ribbed, the hose between the spigot and this connection had come off.  I imagine the freeze/thaw cycles over the years separated the hose from this connection even though it was in the dirt.  Bob would use air to blow the lines clear of water, but this spigot was one of the farthest ones away from the pump house.

Here is the spigot after I placed it back in the ground.

Here is the spigot working.

Tetanus shot and more

Today I got my tetanus shot at the Flathead County immunization clinic.  Actually it was a Tdap shot: Tetanus, Diptheria and Pertussis.   Whooping Cough (pertussis) was a big problem in the Flathead Valley last Winter, and the nurse told me a 70 year old man came down with it today, August 1.   So I relented and spent the extra $16 to get the Pertussis dose in my shot.

I was overdue for a tetanus shot as my last one was in 2000.  The shots are good for ten years and the health people recommend getting a booster shot if one is cut or has wounds within a few years of having the original shot.  In my case that would mean getting a booster shot every few years as working around the ranch I am always getting cut, especially when working on barb wire fences.


While uptown I turned in my jury pool questionnaire.   I was selected to be in the jury pool for the Fall term.  You'd think Fall would mean: September, October and November.  No.  Fall for this Court means Sept 1 through February 29.  So, who knows, I may be on a jury.   "Guilty!  Guilty! Guilty!  Off with their head!"   Now that was easy.


Last night I mentioned one of the horses moved my garden hose as I was watering my raspberry plants.  Tonight I caught the white filly reaching over the fence and eating my raspberry plants.    Before I watered the plants the horses left them alone, even the one raspberry plant that grew outside the fence.  Now that they seen me water the plants, that perked their interest.  They ate the tops of over half the plants.  I had a small roll of field fence so I placed it over the top of the plants.  Tomorrow I will see if that stopped the horses.


My cherries are all gone.  One barely ripe cherry was left and I ate it before a robin could get to it.  Last night when I watered the strawberry plants one robin was up in a nearby tree having a fit that I was near "their" strawberries.