Burning the ditch

Thursday after I returned home from the auction I did some more burning.  It hadn't rained that day and the wind was blowing in the right direction and at the right speed: not too fast, not too slow.

The burning went very well as the wind pushed the fire along nicely.  I even let the fire burn where it wanted into the hayfield for the most part until dark.

The south half of the fence along the ditch is old and after the fire passed by I had to put out several wooden posts that started to smolder from the fire.

Frustrating auction

Today Dan and I drove down to Missoula to attend the big feeder cattle auction.  I had hope of buying ten head of cattle.  The grass is not growing yet but I have plenty of hay to feed them.

We got to the auction after it started but that was alright as they were selling slaughter cows first.  We tried to walk through the cattle holding pens but we didn't get very far.  People were still bringing cattle to the sale and these cattle had to be moved through the aisles to their holding pen.   Then when we were in another aisle the livestock handlers moved a large group of cattle and suddenly we had a herd of cattle trying to get past us.   We gave up trying to check the holding pens out and went inside to the auction.

Because I planned to hire Evan to haul the cattle I needed to make sure I had ten head of cattle to make it worthwhile to justify the cost of transporting them.  What came through the ring were large groups of cattle (98 head, 63 head, 29 head, etc.) or the number of cattle were 4 or 3 or 2 or 1.  There were some groups of four or 3 or 1 that were good cattle but since I wasn't able to check all the holding pens out I didn't know if there were any more good cattle in the weight range I want that were coming through the ring.  I didn't want to get stuck with hauling only 3 or 4 cattle.

In the end I got no cattle though in hindsight I could have build a herd of ten head with quality cattle.  I was very frustrated by the end of the auction.

There is another large feeder sale on April 12 so I have another opportunity to buy a herd.

The prices for cattle are higher but the prices today weren't as high as had been listed for recent sales.  Some cattle at the lighter end of my desired weight range had been going over $2 a pound and all cattle sold today were well under that price range.   Even so cattle are selling for good prices.  The 98 head of cattle weighed a little under 80,000 pounds and a rough calculation of the total price based on the price per pound put the total sale price at over $105,000.   One person (a cattle buyer most likely representing a feedlot) bought the entire herd of 98.

Here is the view as Dan and I drove back from Missoula.  These are the Mission Mountains.

When we got to my driveway a large flock of almost twenty wild turkeys were in milling around the driveway entrance.  They slowly moved out of the way.

Eventually they moved from the yard to the fruit tree and garden area.  The larger turkeys could not squeeze through the fence and had to hop/fly to the top of the fence where they wobbled until they could hop back down to the ground on the other side of the fence.

Burning the yard

Monday was cloudy and wet.  Tuesday was another dry sunny day.  I burnt more grass.

I finished burning the NE pasture and the ditch that is along this pasture.  My neighbor north of this pasture hadn't mowed his yard all the way next to my fence.  Snowberry bushes had grown in this strip of tall grass that is about a yard wide.  He was outside Tuesday and I talked him into burning half of his tall grass strip.  He has an old camper near to the grass strip on the west side and a topper and odds and ends of stuff on the east side so we didn't burn those sections.   We also burned the ditch along the corner of his property that abuts mine.

The breeze was variable.  A light breeze then a strong breeze then back to light.  Over and over.   The wind speed at times made me nervous, especially with tall grass.  But we had a garden hose out and there really wasn't anywhere the fire could go beyond where we wanted it to burn.  Still I started the burning at the back side of the grass so the fire had to burn into the wind.  Once I felt comfortable at how the fire acted I switched to dragging the starter fire on the upside of the grass so the fire would burn into the grass.  It was a much faster way to burn.

On the very NE corner of the NE pasture are a half dozen very tall long needle pine trees.  Underneath the trees were lots of dead pine needles which burn hot.  I hadn't burned this area for a couple years now so the needles were thick.  But everything burned fine and the fire didn't get crazy.

After I finished the NE pasture and ditch I was at the front yard and for kicks I put some burning grass on the yard.  I hadn't mowed the yard a final time last Fall so the grass was not short.  As the Spring has been cool the green grass has not started growing much and therefore the yard burned well.

Why mow when you can burn?

Tammy was working on her schoolwork and didn't want to come out and help me burn so I had to burn slow and careful.

After burning along the fence between the yard and hayfield,

and a little in the hayfield,

I moved back to the north pasture.  By now it was late afternoon / early evening and the wind was dieing down.  Even though I have the river as a boundary I wanted burn a fire break on the west side to eliminate any chance of the fire escaping into the very NW corner of the property and onto my neighbor's property along the river where he has tall dry grass.

Before the wind died and the temperature cooled I was able to burn a fire break along much of the west side.  This will make it easier to safely burn another day when a decent breeze is blowing.  I just have to get past the forecast which has rain each day for the next week.

Spinach artichoke chicken

Tammy has a Tastefully Simple mix for making a spinach artichoke dip.  Tonight she used the mix instead as a seasoning mix on chicken she cooked in her crock-pot.

Yum.

Burning pasture

Wow.  Sunday was nice.  No snow.  No rain.  No clouds.  Temperature in the 50s.  You'd think Spring is coming.

I planned on dragging my harrow around the hayfield but I got distracted by fire.  In the NE pasture I had a few patches of tall grass that I didn't mow and I got the idea of trying to burn them to "clean them up".  The burning went better than I expected as I thought it might have been too wet and cool to burn well. It wasn't and the grass definitely was dry.  The green grass hasn't really started growing yet so that didn't get in the way of burning.  And there was a light breeze to encourage the fire.

So I burned more of the NE pasture than I planned.  I would have liked to have burnt all the remaining tall grass in the NE pasture but the part I didn't burn went all the way up to the neighbor's yard and due to the general wind direction I decide to err on the side of being too cautious and plan to burn this area another day.

Instead I burned the tall grass along the south corral fence to clean this area up.

Then it was on to tall grass in the north pasture. By the time the horses were pastured in the north pasture last year some parts of it started to dry up so the horses preferred to eat elsewhere in the north pasture.

I burned the area between the wheel tracks to create a fire break.  Then when I was ready to burn the first large area I asked Tammy to come help me.  I felt more comfortable having a second person help keep a eye on the area being burnt.   However by the Tammy got dressed and came out to help me I had the first section burnt already.

I was working on burning more between the wheel tracks to prepare a fire break for the rest of the burning.  The grass was taller in this section and in several places the breeze came up and the fire jumped the wheel track into tall grass on the other side and began to spread.

Uh oh.

While the fire would have lost fuel and died out once it reached the neighbor's mowed yard I don't like losing control of the fire.  This section was large and there was always a chance of something unpredictable happening. For example the wind could suddenly increase or change direction.  I furiously worked at putting out the fire.  The grass was so dry that embers would start spot fires that quickly grew.  To my advantage was when the variable wind would die down.  Up down.  Up down.  When the wind died down I gained on the fire only to lose my gain when the wind kicked back up.  Finally I got the fire out north of the wheel track.  The fire on the south side was easier to put out.

Once I got the extra fires out... then Tammy showed up to help.  She had been working on future women's expos and wasn't happy I drug her outside to help me.  She hadn't seen how the fire almost go away from so she felt I could handle the fire without her help.

My enthusiastic helper.

Once we burnt the wheel track all the way to the river I had a fire break splitting the north pasture in two.

The light breeze was now from the north so I was able to work on burning the tall grass north of the fire break.  Part of this area had large dead spotted knapweed weeds I had sprayed herbicide on last year and killed.  It was ugly and some weeds had seeds on them.  It was best to burn them up.

I was able burn the majority of these weeds before the wind died and the sun set.  Once that happened the energy for burning disappeared and the grass and weeds didn't want to burn without a lot of encouragement.  So we called it a day. I plan on finish burning this area and a few others another day.

The taller black dead stuff is knapweed plants.

The first large section I had burned.  Before and after.

What I burned in the north pasture.

Expo food drive

As part of Tammy's expo on Saturday we also gathered donations for the local food bank.  Here is the amount of food we collected.  The total weight was 120.6 lbs.

Spring Fling expo

Today Tammy held her first big expo here in Kalispell.   She rented the Country Kitchen building at the fairgrounds to hold an expo for local home based direct selling businesses.

The County Kitchen building is the smallest of the the four main buildings one can rent at the fairgrounds.

We came up with a layout to hold 38 vendors and she found enough vendors to fill all the spaces.  A few weeks ago we even set up a few tables as a practice to ensure that my layout on paper would work and still have enough room for everyone.

Friday afternoon Tammy and I went to the building and set up all the tables and chairs and got everything ready.  Tammy set up her table for Tastefully Simple so she would be ready this morning to help everyone else.

A half dozen vendors were already waiting at the building Saturday morning when Tammy and I arrived at 8 am.

We ended up with 35 vendors as three vendors had family emergencies at the last minute and were unable to attend.

Everyone was set up and ready by 10 am. The start was slow but it then picked up and the attendance was fairly steady until we closed at 4 pm.   Some vendors started to pack up and leave at 20 minutes to 4 pm which annoyed Tammy.  She wanted everyone to be there for the last minute shoppers.  Overall I think the vendors did well.

Also at the fairgrounds the state wrestling tournament was being held all day over at the Trade Center building.

The fairgrounds has a poor layout of roads and buildings and generally it is confusing to find buildings.  Toss in the wrestling tournament at the Trade Center and all the crazy parking and it was difficult for people (and even for a few of our vendors) to find our building in the middle of the fairgrounds.  We had people at our building looking for the tournament and we had people at the tournament looking for our event.

Yup. We are located way down near the end of this road.

Tammy and I are working on having better signs.  We had gotten a couple of old sandwich board signs from Michelle. Last night I painted over the old words.  I had to bring the signs into the house overnight so they would dry by the morning.  I had no time to paint words on the sign this morning so I took a large magic marker and wrote the word EXPO on the signs.  Not perfect - but it will do until we come up with permanent wordage.

Here is the entrance to the fairgrounds.  The entrance is by the trade center (the building on the right side).

The layout at the start.

More views from different corners of the room.

One of the vendors (Tridagam) sold board games.  Lots of board games. While Tammy's expo was a "women's" expo, it was called that because most products were more interesting to women than men.  Yet, Tridagam did well and sold a number of games.  Women like playing board games too.

Tammy's new display layout.  I built a few small boxes, and with a few boards I had in my scrap wood pile, I came up with a two level display.  Tammy bought another table cloth to provide more color.  She seems happier with her new display layout now, though when I was trying to design and built it she wasn't interested in it.

All in all it was a successful expo and everyone seemed please with the outcome.

Browning party

Thursday Tammy had a Tastefully Simple party north of Browning, Montana.   A woman Tammy had met last December at the expo in Browning decided to have a party with a few of her friends.

The location was east of the mountains and a long way to drive but Tammy was game. Or actually, I was game as I was the one who drove.  Besides it would be nice to get out of the Valley and the overcast skies and see some blue sky for a change.

It had snowed in the morning and the weather had turned to rain by the time we left.  I had concerns the rain would turn to snow by the time we crossed Marias Pass but it was rain all the way to the pass.  After we reached the pass the rain stopped and we drove into blue skies as the clouds would go no further east than the mountains.

With the blue skies we also got wind.  The wind blew hard.  I could feel it pushing the vehicle as I drove.

I had thought the party was being held at a house on the north side of Browning.  North side was right.  Only it was 28 miles north of Browning.

There isn't much east of the mountains and we drove out into less than even that.

After over twenty miles on a paved highway we turned off onto a county gravel road. It was another four to five miles on this road to the house.    Even with binoculars I doubt one could see any houses.  Even the power line poles looked out of place and few and far between.

Before we got to the house we came to a gash of a large valley that one didn't see until they came up on it. The house - and ranch - was down in this Valley.  Anything to reduce the wind.   The following photo doesn't capture the width and depth of this valley.  At the top of the hill, as one started to go down, it caught a person's breath as one initially didn't see the road beyond the initial drop.  Then one could see where the road went down the hill.  *whew!*  The woman holding the party said their Fed Ex driver often won't drive down the hill to get to their house, especially if there was any snow or even a thought of snow.

Along the gravel road were good fences.  Instead of boards or wire, the fence was made up of long thin flexible pipe threaded through the wood and steel fence posts.  I think the pipe is from well drilling.  Earlier along the gravel road it looked like a group of yearling buffaloes were around a hay stack.   I asked one of the owners if they also had buffalo as the fence looked sturdy enough for these animals.  Nope.  Just horses and cattle.  How many cattle?  They planned to calve 800 hundred head.

I don't remember driving over potholes on the gravel road but once we arrived at the party I noticed that Tammy's side of the vehicle was really dirty - even the windows - while my side of the vehicle was only slightly dirty.


After two and a half hours for the party it was time to drive home.  The drive back and forth was two hours each way.

The sun was setting as we left.

It was dark by the time we were back into the mountain crossing.  The clouds were dissipating.   The rain had quit and the roads were drying except for the snow melt.  We went into and out of fog over and over as we twisted, curved and wound our way through the mountains.  At one point we came upon a very large mule deer standing in the road.  Even in the minivan the deer's body looked to be window height.  I was able to quickly slow down and the deer trotted back off the road as I slowed.  Just another thing to keep a person awake and alert.  No cruise control driving or zoning off as one drove here.

On our drive back home we saw very few vehicles on our sixty or so mile journey through the mountains.


The next photo was taken west of Marias Pass on our journey to the party.

The following photo is of Elk Mountain.  I had climbed it this past August:  http://tallpineshiker.blogspot.com/2011/08/elk-mountain-in-glacier-park.html

At Marias Pass.

Plenty of snow at Marias Pass.

Snow and more snow

Mother nature is ignoring the calendar.  It is suppose to be Spring but the temperatures struggle to reach the lows 40s and most days it snows.  The snow does melt by late afternoon, but the flurries continue off and on mixed with rain sometimes.  The sun is a distant memory.

Today's view:

According to the snow pack measurements on Flattop Mountain, after a slow start to the Winter we now have plenty of snow in the mountains.  We already have more snow on Flattop Mountain than the average snow pack's peak in a year - and the snow season is not over yet as we are not near the typical time of the peak snow pack.

Under the weather

While it seems as if much of the U.S. has wonderful weather this week and weekend, we are stuck in an average to below normal Spring weather pattern.  Cloudy, cold and wet.

It snowed most of today.

The snow had pretty much melted before today so the snow you see in the photos is new snow today.

In addition to the weather being "under the weather", both Tammy and I are under the weather.  I think she caught a cold at one of her Tastefully Simple parties last week.  Three days after her party she came down with a cough that developed into a cold.  I started getting some minor symptoms of it a few days after that.

We improved by Thursday so we did the Taste of Home show, but the next morning she was back down for the count.  So much so she stayed in bed most of the day and didn't go and set up her Tastefully Simple booth at the Home and Garden show that started late that afternoon and runs through the weekend.

By the end of yesterday I again developed more symptoms - a mild cough and a bad headache.  The headache slowly moved from the left side of my head to the front right by the time I went to bed.  This morning I slept in till noon and once I got up my headache was gone.  I still have a stuffy nose.  Tammy is improving, but at a slower rate.