Working around the rain

The weather in Montana this past Spring has been cool and wet.  The last few days have been very wet.  Yesterday we had a break in the rain and I got part of the yard mowed.  I guess I should have mowed until dark and finished the mowing job as I woke up to rain this morning.  It has been raining off and on all day.

I was able to take advantage of a break in the rain and ride a couple miles on my bicycle.  This is the first time I have ridden all month.  I have always ridden at least 1 mile each month on my bicycle since June 1983.  I would hate to break a consecutive string of so many months.  If I missed riding this month, to exceed 27 years non-stop, I would have to ride until I was 80 years old.

Since I couldn't work outside Tammy helped me organize some of my pantry shelves.  Without organization I have been storing extra cans of food downstairs in the basement.  This doesn't sound like much but organizing and cleaning takes time.

Another day of using my wood stove to warm the house and keep the damp chill at bay.

Mowing the lawn

I don't have any cattle this year.  I've been busy with the census so I didn't buy any.  Dan has other plans so he didn't have any cattle to pasture.  Chris found Fish & Game land for his pairs and Johnny found other pasture for his yearlings.

So I have no cattle right now to eat my lawn down like in other years.  Therefore I had to start mowing today as it quit raining - finally!  What a shame as the grass would have been plenty to feed cattle.

Vet Sign

Friday I learned of a few roads in my Census district I may not have gotten maps, etc. from the main census office for me to check on. Earlier a homeowner living in this area came to one of my workers asking to be counted. (See, not all people are cranky 'don't count me' types.)

This area is a rural area along the mountains so Tammy and I went out there to check on how many homes were there.  A few dozen or more it seems.

Here is one of the signs we encountered.

Gophers again

I took some time from my census work and Tammy and I walked the pasture and checked my gopher traps.  I trapped one pocket gopher (number 70 for the year) and set two more traps at fresh mounds of dirt.

No more regular gophers trapped, though one trap was triggered.  Maybe it was the wind that did it... or a mouse.

The river looks higher too.   A few days ago when we walked the pasture we found a couple teenagers on the opposite river bank.  They were fishing.  They also had a small campfire going, which was producing plenty of smoke.

My neighbor to the south plowed his sister's field and yesterday he "rolled" it.  That is, he pulled a very large heavy metal roller (think of the Flintstone's car's wheels) and flattened the plowed field.  Maybe his sister will plant grass for hay - finally.   Hope so, else it becomes a weed field every year.

Tree and bird hole

Tammy and I checked out the tree next to the house I where I covered the holes to keep the birds from using.  Didn't work.  They carved out a new hole below the board.

Guitar Cat and the Tulips

In case you only read my posts emailed to you, here is my updated profile photo.

Guitar Cat and the Tulips

On tour and coming to a town near you.

Here is the cover art for his next music album...

Gophers and girlfriend

Tammy has arrived from Minnesota and I am trying to wind down my Census work.  Yesterday we took a stroll around the pasture to check out the trees, river and gopher traps.

I hadn't checked my gopher traps since I started the crazy census work.  We found one dead regular gopher in a trap.  The gopher had been dead a very long time and smelled terrible.  I had to hold my nose when getting it out of the trap.  That chore was hard as I didn't want to touch anything close to the gopher.  Eventually I got the gopher out of the trap and now have the trap dangling in the river in an effort to clean it.

I have hopes this gopher was the mate for the gopher I trapped just before I started my census job.  None of the other traps were triggered and no new holes were found.

The river is higher but not too high.

Tammy took time to pet one of the neighbor's two horses.

I took time to pull up a tree root.

Just how long is that root?!

Flat tires, broken windows and bears

Poor Joyce.  Last week the border patrol checked her out twice while she was doing census work.  And she saw a large bear bear.

This week her luck wasn't so good:

• She saw a mother black bear with cubs wandering down her road,
  
  
• Heard stories about grizzly bears wandering around the people's houses recently,
  
  
• Monday got a flat tire from the rough North Fork road.  Fortunately a guy eventually drove by and helped her change her tire.  One would think that when the County bladed the road it would be better.  Not really true with this rough road.  "Blading" is half ripping the road up by the road grader in order to have some gravel/rock to blade.
  
  
• Tuesday she locked her car keys in her car.  She found someone with a working phone and called me in the afternoon.  From the quality of the call I thought she was calling from some remote area in the other part of the world.
  
  I had to drive to Bigfork to meet with the rest of my team so I couldn't drive up the North Fork to bring her spare car key.  She asked me if some trick with a tennis ball would pop her car lock open but I had never heard of that idea.
  
  Instead Joyce ended up breaking a small window in her car and reaching in to unlock the door. At least her car had a small window as many cars today do not.
  

Where Joyce is doing census work is over 40 miles from 'civilization' (Columbia Fall, MT).  I am not slighting Polebridge, as other than the Mercantile and the Northern Lights Saloon, nothing is there.  All while Joyce was working ten to twelve hours a day on the census.

At least Joyce didn't get into trouble that eventually involved the sheriff department like another census worker in the Valley did recently.  There is a crazy story in that, but one I'm not going to share as it didn't involve any members of my team, and I heard it second hand.

Census work near the border

Earlier this week one of my census workers was canvasing the part of my district up in the North Fork that borders Canada.  She parked her car near the long (since the early 1990s) closed border crossing in order to do census paper work.

She wasn't parked there very long when suddenly a border patrol agent appeared and asked her if she needed help.

She explained she was working on the census and asked if she should move her car.  The agent said no, she was fine, and then he left.

She said it wasn't 15 minutes later when another border patrol agent suddenly appeared and asked if she needed help.

"No.  Should I move my car?  You're the second agent to talk to me.  I am just working on my census forms."

No.  He told her she was fine.

"Then why the interest in me?"

He told her she was parking at a known smuggling drop point near the border.

She asked where the agents were located as they seemed to come out of nowhere and she couldn't tell where they were.  She was told, "We have our hiding places."

I do know the border patrol takes their job seriously.  Last year when I hiked to Mt Hefty I saw the hoof prints from a number of horses on and near the faint hiking trail to Mt Hefty.  Mt Hefty straddles the border with the U.S. and Canada.  This Spring I happened to deliver a census questionnaire to the Kalispell residence of one of the border patrol agents (he was in uniform when he answered the door).  We had an interesting conversation on the areas he patrols along the border, etc.  He was one of the people who patrol on horseback and we compared the time when I saw the hoof prints and when he was patrolling the area.

Also on Joyce's first day as a census worker she saw the largest black bear she had ever seen.  The bear was walking down the road she was driving on and in no hurry.

Census district

For the census, in case you are wondering what is my area of responsibility.

The area inside the red Xs is my area.  As you can see I am responsible for over half of Flathead County - at least in area (but not in population).  I also have part of Lake County (shown in blue).

So I have two counties, and my area borders seven other counties. The Continental Divide is my eastern boundary.   I also have much of Glacier Park and most - if not all - of the Bob Marshall Wilderness.  While the wilderness has no housing units (as far as I know as my team hasn't covered those maps yet), the Park has more private homes scattered about it than you would think as many houses were grandfathered in as private property inside the Park when it was created in 1910.

I imagine there aren't too many areas in the lower 48 states that are as large and complex as my area.  Several mountain ranges, wilderness, a number of very large lakes, the three forks of the Flathead River, national forests, a national park, a number of small towns, and people tucked up in the mountains to get away from civilization.

In my district, even though I don't have the major towns in my county, I have over three thousand households to visit. In western Montana my district is the largest by far in both size and households over all the other districts.  Many other districts appear to be a half to a third of my size.   Lucky me.

So, if you haven't sent in your census questionnaire yet, and a census worker comes to your door to get your household information from you, please be kind to my people.  They have a hard enough time without you making their day bad.  Some of my workers need this census job as they are barely living paycheck to paycheck.  A few of my workers have limits on how far they can travel as they are waiting for their first census paycheck so they can fill up their vehicle with gas.

What a difference a week makes

Last week on May 5 we had snow...

Now this week the weather has changed and we have sunny skies and temperatures near 60.

The tulips like the nicer weather.

Tulip snow

Further evidence of global warming, that the earth is getting warmer.

May 8, 2009

May 5, 2010

Morning deer

This morning nine deer were in the corner of my hayfield.  Eating and nervously moving about.  Eventually one, then all, jumped the fence into my front yard.  After a bit a car drove by, and with that most, then all, jumped back into the hayfield and ran to my pasture in the back.

At least they seem to stay away from my house and my tulips.

Census boxes

I am tired.  Last week I worked 70+ hours on the census.  This week I am up to 48 hours with one day left to reach my maximum of 55 hours.

Tired.  Tired.  Tired.

I have 11 workers and tonight I got 6 more people who were just trained this week.  Three of them are doing their field observation tomorrow morning and tonight I got them a couple of binders with lists of address we need to contact to get the information the people did not send in to the census in April.

Just when I got the 11 people working smoothly at the job and had a chance to catch my breath I get more people.  Mind you, I need more people in order to get the work done, so I am not really complaining... but I could have used a few more days to get caught up with the paperwork.

Thursday I got the rest of my binders of census address and maps.   Initially I got 12 boxes (63 binders).  Thursday I got 15 more boxes with the rest of my binders.  One box is double sized and I haven't looked in it yet.  I'm kinda scared to.  Good thing I had my pickup else I would not have gotten all the boxes home.

My living room is full of boxes.  And these aren't all the boxes.

Crazy just trying to keep up.

This past morning I woke up from a dream about me and another person trying to get census information from a house and then filling the paperwork out correctly.  NOT what I rwant to dream about!!!

May means snow

Very busy working on the census as a crew leader.  Very busy!  Last week was a 70 hour week getting my team up and running.

Very high winds yesterday. 93 mph at Logan Pass and 40 to 50 mph in parts of the Valley.  I had to wait while a tractor moved a tree off the North Fork road so I could drive home from Polebridge. I was able to dodge the other fallen trees.  One of my team members working in the Swan saw a fallen tree start a fire.

The sleet yesterday was nothing in comparison to the few inches of snow today while I was in the Canyon area.  At least that was better than the 9 inches the southern end of my district (in the Swan) got today.

And some people think May means flowers.  Not here!

Here are a couple of photos I took while driving through Hungry Horse in the Canyon area.

I better get to bed now as I have another long day tomorrow.