Halloween clouds

The clouds and the Swan Mountain Range were lit up by the setting sun tonight.  Instead of the usual rosy color we were treated this Halloween to more orange-ish colors.

Happy Halloween!

West side corral, day 2

Friday it rained most of the day, so no corral work.

Saturday morning started out with a thick inversion.  I checked the Glacier Park Apgar Peak web cam and found it truly was an inversion.  Above the fog the sky was clear blue.  In the Valley the inversion didn't burn off until early afternoon.

It was almost 2 pm by the time I started work on the corral.  I finished around 7 pm.  Subtract an hour to check and move pocket gopher traps (I caught 2 more gophers), and that didn't leave long for corral work.

Time was also spent looking for more boards to nail to the posts.  The "old" corral only had three boards and then the snow fence.  I wanted more than three boards, especially as I am leaning away from putting the snow fence back up.  Six boards would go to the top of the railroad ties and I decided on five boards as minimum.  I can add the sixth board later if I had enough boards left and/or the desire to add a sixth.

2 by 4s, 2 by 6s, 1 by 6s, etc. of all lengths were all mixed and stacked together and I had to spend time go through stacks to find the 2 by 6s in 8 ft lengths that I wanted.

One would think I would only need eight more boards as I had twelve already, but no, the distance between old posts were not always eight feet.  Two sections were eight feet, one section was a little over seven feet and one section was almost 9 feet.  I planned on making each of the rebuilt sections eight feet which meant some of the old boards were too short.

Also slowing me down was my care in digging the hole for the first railroad tie post.  Lots of rocks had been placed around the old post when it was put in place and that slowed my digging down.  Mainly I took care I had everything right before I slid the railroad tie into the hole.  This tie was the one I had to "walk" to this spot as it was too heavy for me to drag.  I had one chance to get its position right as I would not be able to lift it out of the hole for adjustments.

The hole had to be

• in line with the fence line, 

• positioned right at eight feet so the boards would reach the railroad tie but not exceed it,  

• to be the right depth at 30 inches and level at the bottom so as to not cause the railroad tie to lean sideways.

And the good side of the railroad tie had to face outside the corral.

Whew. No wonder I checked and double checked and triple checked and waited before I finally lifted the railroad tie until it slid into the hole with a mighty thud.

Perfect.

Is he reaching for China?  No, just to the bottom of the hole to get the last of the dirt and rocks out at the 30 inch level.

Oh.. by the way, also slowing me down was when the horses came to "help".

What is it with buckets and livestock?  I only had nails in the bottom of the white bucket so I wasn't too concerned when she put her head in the bucket.  When she came up with a mouth full of nails I got concerned.  She did spit them out and I had to pick them up.  Photo 2 is me getting the "eye" after taking the bucket away from her.

Then she turned to the sledgehammer.  Now what could she do with that?  She tried lifting it but it was too heavy.  Then she turned her attention to the tip of the handle.  This time, since she couldn't lift the sledgehammer, she started chewing on the handle.  *argh!* Stop it!!!

I had to take the sledgehammer away from her.  I had to take everything way from them as the other filly ran off with a spare rope I had and another horse wanted to take my coat.  Not to mention they slobbered over everything else.

Go away!

Finally they did.

A jet flew high overhead after I got the railroad tie in place.

Since it is usually dusk when I quit working and take a photo of my day's results, I decided to take a photo before I started to contrast with the end day's photo.

As you can see, I have one section done and the second post removed.  That's all I got done.

West side corral start

Wednesday and Thursday were nice - at least relatively speaking to elsewhere, especially places that got snow - so I decided to work more on redoing my loading corral.  This is the first fence work I've done all year.

The last I had worked on the loading corral was back in 2008.  So much for my quickly rebuilding the loading corral.  Here is a link to posts when I previously worked on it.

Here is an overall view of the west side of the corral and adjacent fence.

Here are photos of when I started and where I ended up the end of Thursday.  Note, Thursday's photo was taken in the rain.

I had expected to get further along but on Wednesday and Thursday I was visited by several of my neighbors. Wednesday's neighbor had learned of the elk in the area and asked if he could hunt on my land.  I already have someone hunting here and I only want one person at a time.

Thursday's neighbor returned the pocket gopher trap I had lent him now that he had caught a pocket gopher.  Now that he knows this method works he plans to buy a trap or two to trap the rest of the pocket gophers on his property.

By the time Thursday's neighbor left it was just starting to rain lightly.  I had just started that day's work on the fence and didn't want to waste another day.  Maybe the rain will stop soon.  I had boards to remove and I could do that in the rain.

It kept raining lightly and I was getting wet.

I decided to get the used railroad ties and move them to the posts I planned to replace.  These ties are 10 ft long and 9 inches by 7 inches in diameter.

Heavy.

For some reason some ties are heavier than others of the same length and width.  I could drag two of the ties to where I wanted them.  The third tie was so heavy I could not drag it and I had to "walk" it by lifting one end and carrying it around.  Then lifting the other end and doing the same.  Over and over.

It will be quite the effort to lift this tie and slide it into the hole once I dig it.  I will have to get it right as the tie is too heavy for me to lift out of the hole.

Here is how the tie compares to the one post I removed.

The forecast is for rain on Friday.  We'll see what happens.  Thursday was suppose to be nice and we had rain.

Minot is 12

Forbes magazine has a list of the best small cities in which to raise a family and my former hometown of Minot came in at number 12.  I like Minot, but I am surprised that out of all the U.S. cities with a population of 100,000 or less Minot ranked so high.

Well, good for Minot.

http://realestate.yahoo.com/promo/the-best-small-cities-to-raise-a-family.html

Turkeys

This morning a flock (or is it a rafter?) of wild turkeys passed through my front yard.

As you can see they hopped/flew on the fence to cross it. One turkey slipped through the fence and another tried and tried to slip through the fence before it finally figured out how to do it.  Then it ran like mad to catch up to the others who were sort-of waiting for it by the apple trees.

By the way... remember me talking about seeing what I thought were a herd of mule deer near my place a few days ago?  A neighbor who lives closer than I saw them too and said they were a herd of elk.

Ah... the wildlife.

Even with the off-and-on rain and generally crappy weather these past few days I checked my gopher traps yesterday to find I had caught another pocket gopher.

The cattle across the road have behaved today with no jailbreaks.

Today is a wet, rainy, chilly  day.  At least a little better than higher up.  This morning I talked with one of my former census enumerators and he said they had a inch of snow at his place this morning.  Get out the skis!!!

Loose steer

This morning I woke to discover that my neighbor across the road finally got livestock on his property.  It took him and the livestock's owner all summer to build a fence, and this past weekend my neighbor finally installed gates on the fence.

The number of cattle was more than I expected for a small field, but then again, the grass is still long and thick from the summer's growth, even if it is mostly dry now.

The cattle must have been delivered shortly before I noticed them as they were in the typical constant movement around and around to check out all the boundaries of their new location.

The new fence looked good when they built it, but by late morning I noticed one steer outside the fence and in the field of another property owner directly across from my house.  This owner kind of had an old fence, and in spots had no fence.

I called Jamie to let him know he had a loose steer.

By the time I went outside the steer had quickly moved south in the ditch along the road and Jamie was arriving.  I let him handle the steer, especially as it had long horns.

This summer when I had talked with the cattle's owner he told me he had Corriente cattle. These cattle do look and act like that breed, especially the escape artist characteristic.

Corrientes are also known as accomplished escape artists, as they can leap a standard barbed-wire fence and squeeze through fairly small openings.

Futile painting

Late Saturday afternoon I decided to 'go for it' and painted my windmill's blades red.  I say 'go for it' as the temperature was in the 40s, it was 6 pm, and the forecast was for rain on Sunday.

The paint can's label said the paint would dry in four hours when the temperature was 35 degrees.

I can do it.

I painted the windmill's blades and still had time to paint one of my rain gutters' downspouts.

I woke up Sunday morning to a light rain/drizzle.

The windmill's blades were again silver as the paint had washed off.  Some of the pretty rocks beneath the windmill were red and/or pink and I had to scrub the paint off them this morning.  I picked up the downspout from where I left it under the patio overnight to dry and found the paint to be wet.

*argh!*

At least the downspout was under the patio and the rain hadn't washed the paint off.   Now if it would only dry.  And the rain to stop as I have projects to complete before winter arrives.

Jet trail

Thursday night I saw a jet trail in the evening sky.

Now that I've finished working on the hayshed I've:

•  raked leaves from much of the yard and dumped them on my garden area and raspberry bushes,

• pruned my raspberry bushes,

• did my monthly start of my RV,

• moved some boards from the pole shed to the hayshed,

• used up the rest of my Manhattan Mist paint on the garage addition I had fixed earlier this summer.  The paint didn't come close to covering the addition,

• set out the rest of my pocket gopher traps.  I caught one pocket gopher and had one trap break.  The broken trap was the old style trap with a plastic trigger.  The new traps have a metal trigger.

• visited a neighbor having a garage sale.  They had so little stuff to sell as to make the sale almost pointless to hold.

• helped Bob and Jan.

• met Bob and Jan's new dog, Chloe.  Jasmine, the previous dog, had a tumor or cancer and had to be put to sleep a couple weeks ago.  They got the new dog from the Humane Society.  It has long legs and is quite thin.
  
  Today they had the dog in their outdoor kennel while Jan ran errands uptown.  Bob saw three magpies harass and attack the dog until it lept/crawled over the fence and run for the house.  The magpies then stole the dog's food and stashed it about the yard for later eating. 

• Midday I saw a herd of 11 mule deer in the field south of my pasture.  Mule deer are unusual as we typically have white tailed deer.

• split some firewood.

Hayshed done

On Wednesday I finished fixing and upgrading my hayshed.  I finally found one silver metal panel to use to compete the side even if its ridges are of a different pattern than the other panels.

Photo 1 was when I started.
Photo 2 is the completed work.

I know it would look better if the panels were all vertical, but at least it looks better now than before I started.

When you look at multiple sides the horizontal panels don't look as bad.

Hayshed progress

 I don't think I've been working hard but last night I slept 11 and 1/2 hours straight.  Wow.  I'm surprised.

Tuesday I worked more on the hayshed.

You'd think I'd get more done each day but Tuesday I decided to move and build more braces between the posts and that takes time as I was way up there and had to move slowly and carefully.  Also because the nights are cold the days don't warm up until early afternoon.   I also spent Tuesday re-insulating the well's pump house door.  I also put out a couple pocket gopher traps and caught another pocket gopher.  That makes 170 of them caught this year.  I lent a neighbor down the road a trap as he has a problem with pocket gophers in his backyard.

Photo 1 is Monday's work and photo 2 is Tueday's work.

The metal sheets I had didn't quite reach all the way across.  Dang!  Now that I look at my work I'm thinking I should have placed each pair of sheets from each side leaving the gap to be filled in the middle.  Especially since my challenge now is to find another silver metal sheet for the last section.  I have a number of white or brown metal sheets but only a few silver sheets, and those sheets are full size and used and not ones I would want to cut a short section from.  Today's plan is to check another storage area that may have silver sheets - which involves moving stuff around..

The temperature is now 47 degrees and, now that I finished baking another apple pie, I should get outside and get to work.

Fixing a post

Adding to the time it is taking to make the repair to the hayshed is the time I spent fixing one of its posts.  The post was not attached to the roof rafter.  Even though the metal sheets connected the post to the wall and it would not fall over (thankfully!) I found that when I climbed up the ladder against the post, the post would lean in beyond the rafter.  When I climbed up inside the shed the post would lean out beyond the rafter.

As you can imagine this presented a challenge to fix the post to hold it in place under the rafter as my only means to reach the top was to place the ladder against the post.  Helping me was a brief spot where the post touched the rafter and would stay in place.  Unfortunately this spot was not the one I wanted as the outside portion of the post would stick out a bit beyond the rafter and would not give an even surface to nail the metal sheets.

My solution was to nail a board on top of the post to hold the post in place where it wouldn't slide outward.  Then nail the rafter to the board to prevent the post from sliding inward.  Because my ladder leaned against the post that meant I had to do each side (inward and outward) from each side.  To make it more difficult the first board I used split and had to be replaced - meaning another round of inward/outward carrying and positioning of the ladder.

The second board I used was a part of a board I had earlier used today to hold the outside rafter to the next one inside.  Over the years, as the outside rafter wasn't resting on the post here, the rafter started to warp/bend outward.  I nailed a board to pull the rafter in near this point and stop the outward bend.  That was challenge between being so high up on a ladder and pulling the rafter in while nailing the board.  Especially when the board was dense and would bend some of my nails before they got all the way through.

So I thought the extra piece of this solid board would be good to use on top of the post as my first wimpy board had split.

Nope.  This dense board also split.  Why?  I don't know.

So I searched my wood scrap pile for another board and this board worked and did not split.

Of course the third board meant carrying and repositioning the ladder yet again inside and out.  Add in extra ladder carries because of a couple of times when positioning the post it slid too far in or out beyond the rafter and the only way to fix it was to go out or in and lean the ladder against the post from the other side.

*sigh*   I carried that ladder many more times than I cared to.  And one of the times I was collapsing the ladder one of my fingers got mashed.  After a little blood I now have a sore finger.  Ya... I used a few choices words during this afternoon's work.

I have extra lumber inside the shed making it harder to position the ladder as I had to carry the ladder over this lumber each time.

Why didn't I use the silver ladder?  That ladder doesn't extend longer and I couldn't reach the top of the post.

When removing the wood sheets and fixing the middle "brace" board I stood on the wood pallets. They are a little wobblier than they look and I made no sudden moves when standing on them.

Here is my end result.  The nails seen in the first photo were added after I finally got the bright idea of adding them to prevent the post from sliding in or out beyond the rafter before I got the board nailed on the post.  Once the post would slide beyond the rafter the only way to get it back under the rafter was to move the ladder inside or out and lean it against the top of the post.

While it doesn't look like it in the second photo the outside edge of the post is flush with the outside side of the rafter.

Fixing a hole

I'm fixing a hole where the rain gets in
And stops my mind from wandering
Where will it go

I'd say I'm doing this for the benefit of Mr. Kite, but that's another song by the Beatles.


Today I finally started on repairing / upgrading my hayshed.

My hayshed is not typical as decades ago (1980 in fact as I helped) dad had added long metal sheets to cover the plywood sheets covering the lower two thirds of the shed.  And added metal and fiberglass sheets along the top.  All in an effort to protect the hay inside.  While I currently am not irritating the hayfield - or getting three cuttings and lots of hay to store in the hayshed - I do have stuff stored in there that I want to protect from the elements.

This summer part of one of the old fiberglass panels blew in and left me with a hole to fix.

Also notice the two pieces of plywood I had added a number of years ago as a patch to fix two former broken pieces of fiberglass until I could get new pieces of fiberglass. 

Since I would be fixing a hole I decided to replace the plywood sheets as they look tacky.

Well... time passed since my plywood repair, and instead of getting new sheets of fiberglass, I have acquired over the years various metal sheets.  They will certainly last longer than fiberglass.

So this is how my repair job looks at dusk today.

I realize it would look better if these sheets' ridges were vertical like the lower sheets, but I am not going to cut the sheets to achieve that look.

Dead bird in the stove

Winter is coming.  Don't you feel the chill in the air?

Lately our temperature has ranged from the teens overnight to the 50s during the day.   The water in the livestock's water troughs freezes over each night.  The garden hose I use to refill the troughs didn't thaw today until mid-afternoon.

The house is cooling down too.  The temperature inside this morning was 53 degrees.  So tonight I lit a fire in the wood stove for the first time this season.  As the fire started I checked the ash pan and found a dead bird.  Ah... so that is what happened!

A few years ago one summer a bird -a flicker - fell down the chimney and walked into the stove whereupon its tapping on the glass window alerted me to the bird.  I used a blanket to take the live bird from the stove to outside where it flew away.

A few weeks ago I heard sounds coming from the wood stove or the pipe leading from the stove to the chimney. Another bird?  I checked the stove and found nothing.  I even took the pipe apart and found nothing but a yellowjacket.  Oh!  The noise must have been made by the yellowjacket inside the pipe.   I hadn't checked the ash pan as the space between the stove's burn area and the pan is so small.

Good thing I found the bird before the stove got hot!

Digging tree stumps

This afternoon the clouds opened over my part of the valley and let the sun shine.  Yay!

I wandered around the south pasture to check it out as I hadn't been there from the time before I went to North Dakota.  I checked out my large cottonwood trees to make sure no beavers had returned to gnaw on them.  They are fine.

I have two tree stumps in the south pasture to dig for burning in bonfires next year.  Today I dug around one stump.  I even dug out part of the stump.

Photo 1 was taken after I pulled the stump from the remaining dirt, but not from the hole.
Photo 2 was after I removed the stump from the hole.

Like pulling teeth!

Since the dirt has some moisture in it and is soft I finished digging around the rest of the stump.  I forgot to take a photo of the end result, though you can see part of the stump in the left side of the above photos.

So... another stump ready for a bonfire next year when Tammy returns for a visit.

Btw - my shovel has a fiberglass handle.  I thought the fiberglass was suppose to be good for life and would not break.  Today the handle is starting to crack and bend.   What's up with that?!

Painted windmill, part 2

In the daylight I took another look and photo of my newly painted windmill.  The paint appears to have dried before the rain fell last night as the paint job is still good.  *whew* 

When rolling the large rock back under the windmill this morning I nicked the windmill.  After shaking and shaking - and shaking! - the paint can finally a bit of paint sprayed out to cover the nick.

In the sunlight the red color - while strong - is not as strong as last night.  I'm still looking for ideas on a color scheme for the windmill...

Painted windmill

Today I worked on the small windmill in my front yard.   I had put it up for my dad back in the late 1990s.  Time has taken its toll as the windmill is starting to show signs of rust.  So time to paint it.

Off-and-on I have been sanding the rust off this past week.  After spending all afternoon today working on it, I decided I was done sanding.  To get all the rust I would have to take the windmill apart and I didn't want to do that.  It was annoying enough to sand what I did as the windmill was all small pieces and edges.

The photo was taken before I finished sanding.

I had time before dark and I ended up spray painting the windmill until I ran out of paint.  I got everything but the blades painted.

I decided to paint the windmill red so as to match my barn color.  I like the red color.  However... I am not sure it is a good color for my windmill now that I painted it.  The red is too bold of a color for the windmill to be just that color.  I think I need at least one other color, maybe more.  But I am undecided as to what the other color should be, and what parts of the windmill should be what color.  My first inclination is to have the second color be white.  But I don't know.

I would greatly appreciate any suggestions as what the color or colors should be, and which parts should be which color.

To end... several things added to my annoyance today:

• I ran out of red paint before I could paint all of the windmill.

• I wore a nicer pair of pants today as I hadn't planned on painting.  Yup, I got paint on the pants and it dried before I noticed it and could clean the paint off.

• I got paint all over my fingers, and even though the paint appeared to have dried and did not want to wash off my fingers, everything I touched got red paint on it.

• Several hours after I finished painting the windmill, it rained.  Come morning and daylight I will see if all the paint dried or whether the rain washed some of it away.

Work produces guns

I've been working here at the ranch and I think it's starting to show...

My 'guns'

Fall colors here

In a recent post I showed the fall colors in ND and eastern Montana.  Here at home the colors are changing too.  While the tamaracks have not started changing colors yet, the aspens, birch and my fruit trees are turning yellow, red and orange.

First up is my neighbor's tree...

Here are my pear trees...

One of my apricot trees...

First days back

Back in Montana to...

• the horses are doing fine.  I picked the rest of the apples and gave the horses the 'reject apples', that is the small apples or the apples the bugs were working on. Of course after I give them apples when they are in the corral the two fillies usually follow me when I later walk out to the pasture.

• I made an apple pie yesterday and pumpkin bread this morning.

• the beaver dam.  When I first got home the water in the far neighbor's field was barely there.  That changed over the next days and the 'lake' is large again.   Today I noticed the beavers are not satisfied with their downstream dam and water level and have again taken to starting another dam on the near neighbor's land to raise the water level even more near their home in the trees.  Someone told me these are bank beavers as they have no lodge.

• one dead pocket gopher in one of three traps I left in the pasture when I went to ND.  I've yet to go out and search for dirt mounds and set more traps to catch more pocket gophers.

• The weather mostly has been decent.  Monday it rained and was cool, else the temperatures have been seasonal and the sky sunny.

• Over the weekend I climbed two mountains.  On Saturday I climbed Calf Robe Mountain and on Sunday I climbed to the top of Inspiration Point.  No lookout on Calf Robe, and on Inspiration Point I found a few cables and anchors and a couple burnt boards from a long-a-go lookout.By the end of hiking on Sunday I was tired.  In 10 miles it was over 2000 ft up, 910 ft down, and an elevation from 6500+ ft to over 7600+ ft.  This was the hardest 10 miles I have hiked.  I am not sure why it was so hard, but maybe one reason was the terrain was similar to a W with little level terrain.

I am trying to find my rhythm and routine again.  I need to get going on projects as I have plenty to do and it is October already.  Winter and snow will be here before we know it.

Ultra-wheels poster

Last item from ND...    I found this old poster of mine when going through stuff at my mother and brother's house.   I had gotten this poster in Minnesota in the 1980s when inline skates were new.  I never did get inline skates.

This model's outfit and hair style is so '80s', isn't it?

Home Again

I am back in Montana. I returned last Thursday via Amtrak and arrived in Whitefish after 9 pm.

I ended up bringing a bunch of stuff back with me.   Since the Minot train station was being remodeled Amtrak had no checked luggage service.  So I had to lug all my luggage on the train with me.

I explained to the train car attendant that I had a lot of luggage so she put me on a train car with lots of room for luggage.  The reason for all the room for luggage was the car currently had no working bathrooms so most people were steered to the other three passenger cars.

It was no problem for me to walk to the next car to use the bathrooms so I got the advantage of sitting in a lightly populated car.

For the most part the car was quiet the entire journey.  An exception was when a couple and the woman's daughters boarded in Williston, N.D. and rode to Havre, MT and sat in the aisles across from me.  At one point the train was stopped and turned off while officials went around the train to check it out to find a disconnected hose.  When the train was turned off that meant the lights and air were also off.  One daughter was creeped out by how quiet it was.  I think we also were in an area where there was no cell service.

All across North Dakota and into eastern Montana I sat and looked out the window.  The Fall colors were in effect and while there aren't a lot of trees as what one thinks about seeing the Fall colors, the grasses, cattails, etc. had plenty of color and were quite pretty.  I think this is the best time to travel by train across North Dakota.  Unfortunately my photos didn't capture the colors.

With the North Dakota oil boom more people than usual got on the train at the Stanley and Williston stations.  And most of them were going back to Whitefish and the Flathead Valley.  I overheard several people talk comparing what they did for work and how they had to come to North Dakota to get a job.  Also a common talk was what they had found for a place to live.

The train was close to on time much of the way.  I think I left Minot ten minutes late and arrived in Whitefish close to on time.

Here are a few photos.  I shrank their size for this blog so the quality isn't 100%.  For more photos, and better versions of these, go to my Picassa site.

The following photos were taken in Montana.

At Havre, MT the stop was long enough that one can get out and walk around.  The weather was ideal: sunny, 70s, and no wind.  The man in black is the train engineer.

Those are the Sweetgrass Hills in the distance.

Crossing the river on the west side of Cutbank, MT.

Sunset near East Glacier, MT.

Little did I know when I took this photo from the train that on Saturday after I got back home I would climb to the top of Calf Robe Mountain.  This mountain is the one that goes from about the right third of the photo and to the right side.  From near where I took this photo I hiked to the mountain, climbed it and walked along the entire top.  Great views.