6250 miles

Happy New Year!

The year is about over and my bicycle mileage is set.  For the year I rode 6,250 miles.  That is:

• 520.8 miles a month
• 120.2 miles a week
• 17.1 miles a day 

 In 39 years of keeping track of my yearly bicycle mileage, 6250 miles is the third highest year for mileage. (7100 is the most miles I have ridden in one year).  Fairly impressive for an old guy.  My bicycle miles are many, many more miles than I drove in my pickup.

No bicycle tour or big event rides.  I never rode more than 210 miles in a week or over 50 miles in a day.  Just steady and consistent riding almost every day, even throughout the Winter.  With all the "fix it" projects around the ranch, and fence work, and cattle work, etc., etc., until it snowed and made the road icy, often I would ride after the sun set.  My evening route is one that I can vary from 12 to 17 miles.

The last few weeks have been a challenge with all the snow that fell and colder temperatures.  Today I had to ride 12 miles in the cold to reach my goal.

So, I hope you had a great year and were able to meet some good goals, and that next year is ever better for you.

Broken hydrant

Well... that didn't last a year.  (http://tallpinesranch.blogspot.com/2015/02/faucet-fix.html)  Last week the cattle broke the pipe coming from the well's hydrant.



While the pipe was on the cattle's side of the corral fence I thought it was solid enough and the pipe didn't stick out much for the cattle to break. But prior to Christmas they did. The fitting coming out of the hydrant head was broken off and the pipe ended up in the water trough.  Thankfully the hydrant and it's pipe wasn't broken.

Once I cut the broken fitting out of the hydrant head using a hacksaw blade, I found new pipe fittings to use.  After I worked on the house well this past Summer I ended up with a few more pipe fittings.  The pipe still sticks through the fence into the corral but now it hugs the fence.  I wrapped, with wire, two parts of the pipe to the fence rails to secure the pipe.  When it gets warmer, or in the Spring, I may look for more fittings to see if I can route the majority of the pipe outside the fence and only have it go through the fence into the water trough at the very end.

Moving hay in the snow

It is good to have a tractor to move hay.  I think back to last year and the deep snow and the struggles using my pickup to pull a hay bale through deep snow.  Much easier to move bales with a tractor.

First I put the bucket on the loader and pushed snow away for a path.  I was able to easily drive through the deep snow but I decided not to do so when carrying a large heavy hay bale.  Plus I wanted to make a wide path for the cattle to walk.  Earlier they had made a single file path through the deep snow but I found that when we shared the path I was the one who had to get off and walk through the deep snow to get past a cow.

I also cleared an area for the new bale and feeder and tried to make it large enough so the cattle could also lay nearby on the ground and not in the deep snow.  And I made a path to the river for the cattle.

This was practice for my scraping snow using the tractor's bucket.  It can be too easy to gouge the ground and I need practice where a gouge doesn't matter much.

The bales somewhat block the view when carrying them.

Next year I will clean out the hay shed so I can store the bales in there and not have to scrape snow off them before feeding them to cattle.


Later I noticed animal tracks in the path I had cleared from the hay bales to the yard.  In the time I had cleared a path out to the pasture some animal went from the hay bales to the yard over my newly created path.  It wasn't Daisy as she was inside the house.  The tracks didn't look to be a dog's tracks either.  I don't what animal it was but it looked to be some sort of animal the size of Daisy or a small dog.

My 2015 Christmas gift

For Christmas, Donna's friend Wendy made for Donna, to give me, this awesome wall hanging.

Other than using a pattern for the cattle, it is all original.  It has the features of my ranch: cow and calf, large hay bales, fence, and tall pines.  Very clever and original.  One of a kind.   And the cow and calf are all black.  No Holsteins for me!  (And no red cattle as Donna is not too fond of Mama cow.) 

Sun

The snow has quit.  We had sun today for most of the day.  The temperature was a little cooler but the sun felt warm.  I was able to finish shoveling the snow from the back yard.

Morning

Afternoon

The cattle were enjoying the sun while at their feeder.

Christmas full moon

Snow.  Snow. And more snow!!!  I thought it was supposed to quit by now, but Christmas morning I woke up to two more inches of snow.  That makes 22.2 inches for December.  We have 11 inches of snow on the ground.  I thought El Nino meant we would be warm and dry in the Pacific NW this Winter. We are well above average for precipitation in December.  Now the weather forecasters say El Nino's effect won't start until January.  They say that when the month is almost over and we are above average in precip.

I'm tired of shoveling snow.

Anyway.... for something different.  Here are photos of the Christmas full moon.  We won't have another full moon on Christmas Day until 2034.

I took one photo using the camera's flash so you can see that the moon is indeed full.

More snow than predicted

1 to 3 inches of snow was predicted for Monday night to Tuesday morning.  I woke up to 6 to 8 inches of snow.

Time to get out the snow shovel.

In the morning I shoveled paths to the various buildings. I spent the afternoon shoveling the driveway.  I had half the driveway shoveled when Curtis and Rusty drove over in Rusty's pickup with a snowplow blade on front.  Rusty plowed the rest of my driveway and then plowed the back by the tool shed.  Tomorrow I will finish the little bit by the garage and then back by the pole shed.  I want to toss the snow by the garage over the fence.  I didn't want the pole shed snow pushed against the wood piles and will shovel it elsewhere.

My mailbox took a hit as someone slid against it and broke stuff up. You know how bad Montana drivers are (I'll try not to get started, but seriously... signal for a right and then turn left in front of me?  was one of three insane Flathead drivers when I drove uptown on Monday).  The mailbox post is somewhat upright, but it is badly cracked and is not solid.  The mailbox front is bent.  With all the snow and frozen ground I am not sure what I can do now.  A permanent solution will be added to my "to-do" and "fix-it" list for next year.

Flaking

I moved another large hay bale for the cattle today.   The twine had rotted and came apart on the bottom letting some hay flake off when I lifted the bale off the wood pallet.  The twine was not plastic.  It's... I don't know... natural.  And more susceptible to rotting.  I think the twine started rotting when Dan stored the bales at his place.

I got a pitchfork and a wheelbarrow and gathered the hay up and took it to the feeder for the cattle.  Hay is too expensive to waste.  And I want to make sure I have enough hay to last the Winter.

Twine

Two gates in hayfield fence

Several days of snow and it looks like - for sure - that this is the end of fencing for the year.  I doubt the snow will melt till closer to Spring. On the corral split fence I did get the rest of the fence sections covered with the wire.  I found pipes to add to the fence but the snow came before I could unscrew the dead submersible pump from one pipe and the fittings from the other pipes.  Eventually I get around to it.  Today I spent much of the day shoveling snow off the driveway and off part of the yard.

Now that I have a little time I can write about one other major fence rebuild I did earlier this year...

Back in July I rebuilt part of the hayfield fence.  I replaced the last internal barb wire gate with a metal gate.  This is between the hayfield and middle pasture.  I also added a new metal gate to the south pasture / middle pasture corner where it meets the hayfield.  In the past when I herded cattle between the south pasture and the hayfield, sometimes some of the cattle would go to the south pasture's NE corner instead of the gate in the middle.  Now if they do that I can just open the gate in this corner.

It took me a week to replace the middle pasture gate, add the south/hayfield gate, and rebuild the fence between the gates.  To ensure I finished before I had to let the cattle into the hayfield I even skipped hiking that Saturday.  It was a good thing I skipped hiking that day as I only finished the fence work several hours before the cattle had to be moved.

Old fence and gate (the old barb wire gate is in front of the reddish metal gate laying down)

New fence and gate.  (looks a little bit more sturdy, doesn't it?)

In the following photo are two railroad ties for the rebuilt fence. The wood pieces are a rotted post and another 'patch' board from the old fence.  Usually I found the 'silver/white' metal t-post with a red cap to be 5 ft 6 inches long.  Certainly in the ground it looked that short.  (The metal post can also be seen in the first photo on the left side of the old gate.)  But once I finally got the post out of the ground I found it to be 8 ft long. You can see half of the post was in the ground from the dirty coloration on the lower half.  Apparently dad or the previous owners pounded the post halfway into the ground to make it even with the other posts.  What a waste of a post.

In the end I was slowed down by a nest of black wasps or hornets who had a hole right under where I had to rebuild the fence to finish up work.  You can see some of the wasps coming out of their hole just below the rock.  I had placed the rock over their hole and the next day they had this new hole.

At this link are 15 more photos of the fence work: https://picasaweb.google.com/109566462412251958234/MiddleFenceGates?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCNujqr73g_32sAE&feat=directlink


Photos of Daisy while I worked on the fence are at her blog post: http://tallpinescat.blogspot.com/2015/12/daisy-helping-with-two-middle-pasture.html
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Cow fight

This morning Mama and a black bronco-faced cow got into a fight.  I don't know what triggered the fight, but you know female cattle, they hold grudges and fight dirty.  Without calves the cows udders aren't producing, but notice each cow goes for the other's udder even though there is nothing to latch on to or drink.

Today I fed them small bales and they got into this fight at feeding time.  The longer they fought the more the other cattle could eat the hay and the less the fighting cows would get. Mama realized this as she was trying to quit fighting so she could eat.   So more than likely it was my racist Black cow that started the fight as she didn't want to quit.  I have two black bronco-faced cows and late afternoon one of them was moving slowly like she was stiff and sore.  Probably the one who was fighting earlier.

At the end of the video watch the black bronco-faced cow glare at Mama, the brown cow.

They fought for much longer than I recorded.  The video is 2:16 long.

https://youtu.be/xGJ7Jb-l61Q

Corral split fence Winter work

I thought I was done building fence for the year [after all it is mid December now] - but.. surprise! - we had some warm weather last week and the snow melted and the ground thawed.  I love El Nino and global warming.

So I have been able to continue to work on the rebuilding of the fence that splits the corral.   One day I dug and placed another railroad tie.  Another day I nailed boards to that tie, then dug and placed the last railroad tie.  Another day to cut and hang boards on the last two railroad ties.  Today I finished nailing those boards.  It feels so good to have all the ties in the ground and the boards up.

A side effect of taking so long to complete the fence is that I salvaged enough cut log sides this year for the entire fence.  If I'm going to go for the "redneck ghetto" look (as Tammy had called it), I might as well go all out.


The following photo was from 2011 before I rebuilt the corral fence - outer and the split.   Looking back... man, that fence looks flimsy.  I'm talking about the outer corral fence, not the inner fence that is falling down.

This photo is from 2014. 

Here is how the fence looks today.

The "back" side of the fence.

I had a decision to make: which side of the railroad ties to place the boards. It is preferable to have the boards on the side the cattle would push against so the boards aren't pushed off the ties.  If so, then I put the boards on the wrong side of the ties.  That is because I place to hold Buddy south of the fence when he is not ready to romance the cows.  But I decided to place the boards on the north side of the ties because I walk on the north side 90% of the time and I prefer to see the rounded side of the boards instead of the cut back side of them.

Then what about the potential of the boards being pushed off the ties?  I nailed the boards with lots of thick long nails. Still...  if a cow sticks her head through the gaps in the fence and pushes to reach grass on the other side a board can break or pop off.   So I started to cut to length and nail wire fence on the back side of the boards.  I have three sections of fence done with four more to go.

Today the cattle are in the corral eating small hay bales.  I feed Rose south of the fence since the cows still push her around.  Being on the same side of the fence as me she wanted to "help" me with the wire fencing.  Rose... standing on the wire fence is not helping.

Rose

Beulah

Red Angus cow with Buddy in the background.

Panda and other cows

Post, snow, hay

The past few days have been warm. It also was rainy.  All the snow melted and the frost came out of the ground.  Yesterday was nice and I worked outside.  I worked some more on the corral fence that I wasn't able to complete before it got cold and snowed.  I have a 27 ft gap to close.  I lined up the remaining railroad ties and boards I need for the fence.  I sharpened up the chainsaw and cut a thick board in half lengthwise to make two long boards.  Before it got dark I was able to dig a hole and place one railroad tie in the ground.  I now only have one tie left to put into the ground to complete the fence.

Today no work on the fence.  It started snowing before noon.  It started snowing as I left on my bicycle to run an errand.  I didn't expect it to snow as heavy as it did.  15 miles later I was back home safe and sound.  Lots of snow on the roads but I didn't fall or get hit by any vehicles.  I was wet from the wet snow that stuck to me as I rode.

Then I gave the cattle a few more small hay bales so I could get the tractor through the corral so I could move another large bale out to the pasture for them.  I decided to only feed them one large bale this time instead of two.  I found the hay I got through Dan is a little stemy.  Several days ago the cattle were in the corral one morning asking for hay.  When I checked their feeders I found both of them up to the ring with hay.  But it was stemy - they had eaten all the good stuff.  It took them two days to finish up the stemy hay.  With only one bale at a time that means only one day at a time of stemy hay for them to finish.

My racist black cattle allowing one red cow to eat from the end of their feeder.

The cattle are fat and happy.  Even Mama is the heaviest I have ever seen her.

Rose on the left and Mama on the right

I so like my tractor.  It made the hay move so much easier than pulling the bale behind the pickup.

I put each new bale in a different spot so one area doesn't get overdone with manure and leftover hay.  The feeder behind the tractor is in the previous spot.