Special election judge and cattle in yard

Thursday Montana had a special election to fill the U.S. House of Representative seat for Montana. Perhaps you heard of the race as the day before the election the Republican candidate was charged with assault of a reporter trying to question him.

There was an effort to make this special election a mail-in election to save all the counties money (a half million dollars).  But the Republican leadership prevented a bill in the Montana legislature from passing that would allow this to occur as they feared this would help the Democratic candidate.   So we held a traditional election on the earliest possible date for an election, which happened to be a Thursday before the Memorial Day holiday.

I was a chief election judge for our precinct again.  With only one question on the ballot, and an uncertain turnout prior to the Memorial Day holiday, the county election department, to save money, limited the number of judges at each precinct.   Instead of six judges at our precinct we had four.  While the turnout was higher than I expected, it was less than for a normal election and we were able to handle everything successfully.

The election had the same hours and procedures.  So I was there at 6 am to setup before the polls opened at 7 am.  The election was over at 8 pm and by 9:30 pm we had taken down and cleaned up the polling place and delivered the results to the county election department.  A long day!  So I am tired today.


Even though I still have one large hay bale left, it is time to let the cattle out on grass.  I will save the hay bale until Fall.  The cattle have been complaining to me that they want to be let out to eat grass.  Wednesday before the election I blocked off the yard at the house with corral panels and let the cattle eat the grass in the back yard.

The calves were all excited.  They ran all over checking everything out.

Over night, and all day Thursday, I had the cattle back in the corral.  They finished their second to last hay bale by this morning.  I let them back in the back yard for a few hours to finish the grass while I added protection to the pump house, windmill, caragana hedge, and various bushes and shrubs in the front yard.

In the afternoon I let the cattle have access to all the yard.  They have plenty of grass so I am letting them stay in the yard overnight as they should have enough to eat to occupy their time and not get into trouble.  The faster they eat the yard's grass down the faster I can let them into the pasture and then clean up the yard.

I put a tarp over the pump house roof.  Otherwise the cattle will try to eat the roof shingles and tear some of them off.

After the calves run all over, they drink from their mothers then lay down together and rest.