Pikes Place Market

May 19 my uncles, aunts, Tammy and I drove up to the VA hospital in Seattle to see my uncle Gary who was in the ICU.  He was on a new medicine and was extremely drowsy.  I don't think he knew I was there to see him.

After our short hospital visit we went to the Pikes Place Market to walk around and shop.  We also ate lunch there.  While eating lunch we talked about medical marijuana in Washington and Montana.  During my conversation with my uncles a woman came over and joined our conversation.  She tried to somehow link our  Montana/Washington medical marijuana conversation to gay rights.  I'm sure how the two were related other than her girlfriend is originally from Helena, Montana.

We didn't see the entire market but enough to give Tammy a flavor of what it is like as she had never been to Seattle before.  Curt bought a small photo of sailboats in a marina in heavy fog.  Diane was going to get some fresh flowers but we didn't walk back that way on our way out of the market.

There were a number of street performers at and around the Pikes Place market.  Across the street one old man was playing an upright piano on a street corner.  It looked to be a lot harder to 'lug' around on the hilly streets than a guitar.  Here are the "Beatles" minus Ringo.

Here is another supergroup, though I must confess I never got their name.

To Tacoma and back

May 18 Tammy and I drove to Tacoma, Wa. to visit some of my uncles, aunts and cousins.  And to hold a Homemade Gourmet party in Bellevue, Wa. for Rachel, my former insurance agent.

Our start was neither late nor early at 9:20 am.  We made good time even though we passed through a half dozen or more sections of road construction.  The traffic was lighter than I expected.  I wonder if it was because it was a weekday or if it was due to high gas prices.

Barn along Hwy 28 north of Hot Springs, MT

Crossing Lookout Pass into Idaho

From Lookout Pass, the view back into Montana

I-90 in Idaho

Bridge where we crossed the Columbia River in Washington state

View up river of the Columbia River

As we pulled out of the Columbia River overlook parking area a woman arrived with her dog with its leg in a cast.

Our first view of Mt Rainer as we were slowed by heavy traffic between Auburn and Puyallup.

Our view of Mt Rainer the next day as we drove up to Seattle.

On our drive back home, as I filled the car with gasoline at the Flying J truck stop in Post Falls, Idaho, Tammy bought two monster pieces of pizza and devoured them both.  Though she was afraid I would take a photo of her eating the pizza, I didn't.  But I did get a photo of her sticking her tongue out a me. (not included here, but for a fee I will send a copy to you. )

Even though we got a late start from my uncle and aunt's house, we made good time as we stopped only once for gas and a bathroom break, and we had one less highway construction project to go through as the chip sealing of the new pavement on Hwy 28 was done.  We got home before dark.

The cattle still had plenty of hay.  Here are the hay levels in the metal feeder when we left and after we got back.

Leaving for Tacoma

My girlfriend Tammy and I are leaving now to drive to Tacoma, Washington to visit my relatives, and also to hold a Homemade Gourmet party on Friday for Rachel, my former insurance agent who lives near Seattle.

We will be there only for a few days as I have 8 heifers in my corral.  I left plenty of hay and water for them and my neighbor will check on them when we are gone.  I have a second water trough and I got it out and cleaned it.  I found a small cut in the bottom of the metal tank and I decided to use some waterproof glue to seal the cut.

Last night I finished my rebuild of the feeder next to the barn and put hay in it.  Hay is in their regular feeder and I tossed bale after bale this morning into the round feeder I recently bought.   All this hay should last the cattle almost a week, more than enough time.

The cattle were looking at me strangely this morning as my behavior and all this hay and water is something new.

I hope all continues to go well and the heifers behave while I am gone.

Cattle eating hay

Here are a few photos of my cattle eating hay.  Some cattle are camera shy as they moved out of the photos.  The one heifer still has her limp, though I think her leg may be getting a little better.  Tammy and I decided to name her Grace.

Tammy's here

Tammy arrived on Wednesday May 11 and she will be here with me until May 31.  Almost three weeks!

A rainbow came out after her arrival.

We've been busy since her arrival as she went right to work helping me around the ranch.

Kitchen leak

While doing Spring cleaning in the house today I noticed the cupboard floor under the kitchen sink was still damp.  Over a month ago I had replaced the corroded drain pipes.  I expected the cupboard floor to be dry by now.

Upon a closer look I discovered the cold water pipe had a 1 and 3/4 inch steel pipe connection between the copper pipes that lead to the main water line and to the faucet.   This connection was corroded and wet.

I replaced this corroded connector with another good one I found.  I'm sure there is a better material to use than steel, but steel was what I had on hand.  I believe it will last me long enough.

Here is a photo of the bad connector where you can see where the leak occurred.

Limp

One of my black and white heifers was walking with a slight limp this morning.  I have no idea how she hurt her back left leg or hoof or whatever.  I could only get close enough to see that her leg is not swollen, which is a good thing.

Whenever I was by the corral the rest of the day most of the cattle were laying down taking their siesta and I didn't want to cause them to move.  Hopefully her leg will be better tomorrow.

The cattle are getting more used to the corral and me.  They don't always walk away to the far corner when I enter the corral.  They will stand and watch me as I check their hay feeder or when I walk through the corral on the way to the pasture.

Cattle baron again

Friday I bought eight heifers.   My plan was to buy six steers but cattle are scarce and steers especially so.  Dan had been keeping an eye out for cattle I could buy but everyone was not selling or were holding on to their cattle for a while longer.  Cattle prices are higher and look to stay that way.  And with hay plentiful and cheap, ranchers are holding on to cattle to have them eat their hay up.

I was the second person on Rich's list and the other person ahead of me bought the half dozen or so steers. Rich only had heifers left when it was my turn.  Rather than wait and take a chance some steers would come available later I decided to buy the heifers.  I have hay I want eaten up.

The heifers are also lighter than I planned to get.  I wanted cattle that weighed between 500 and 600 pounds. In the past I got cattle as light as 539 lbs and heavy as 720 lbs.   The heifers I bought weighed on average 459 lbs, with a few on the heavier side and a few looking to be much lighter.  This will be different for me and I'll see how much they gain weight.

Lighter cattle don't eat as much as heavier cattle.  In the past I wanted lighter cattle because I didn't have as much hay to feed them - and then couldn't find any cattle on the light side, but this year I have a barn full of hay and would have liked heavier cattle.

Oh well.

I used my stock trailer to get the cattle after I bought them.  The last time I used my stock trailer to move cattle was four years ago.  During that move my stock trailer's brake locked up damaging my tire. I fixed the brake.  Today's trip was the first time I used the stock trailer since then.  How would the brakes work, especially after sitting for four years?

The brakes did not permanently lock up like before, but a few times they would lock the tires by the time I stopped.  Darn. However I noticed that by the time I got to Rich's place the tires didn't seem to be locking up.  When the trailer was loaded with cattle the tires never locked up and worked like they should.

But something always goes awry.   This time when I backed the trailer into Rich's loading chute I was a little to one side and I couldn't fully open the handle to open the trailer door.  I moved the trailer a little hoping to move the trailer further away from the one side.  Somehow the handle got caught against the corral and broke off.  Now I couldn't lock the trailer door.  Not a good thing.

Fortunately before I left home I decided to throw a couple ropes into the pickup in case I needed them.   And did I!  That was how I secured the trailer door once I got the cattle inside.   Rich has a welding machine but he was unable to use it to create a solid weld of the handle back onto the trailer door.  I'll have to take the trailer to a welding shop and have a professional weld the handle.

The ground was uneven in Rich's loading chute and the cattle are smaller and shorter than usual so they had trouble stepping up into the trailer.  It took Rich and I some effort to convince the cattle to climb into my trailer.  The last heifer was short and I lifted one of its legs onto the trailer floor before it climbed into the trailer.

As the cattle were smaller they all easily fit in the trailer with lots of room to spare.  That made pulling the trailer more interesting as occasionally they would move around as I drove which altered the weight balance.  This was especially interesting when I drove at highway speeds.

The cattle are skittish.  I imagine rightfully so as they were from two herds and spent the last so many days being moved around.  Also Rich gave them eight-way shots for their health protection and branded the ones without brands with his brand so all would have brands.  That made it easier for the brand inspector's bill of sale.

For the first several days here the cattle would all run to the far corner of the corral when they saw me.  They also stayed together as they moved around the corral.  Today the cattle are not in such a tight group and don't always run to the corral corner when they see me, but they still keep their distance and always stand up when they see me out and about in the yard or corral.

As you can see some of the heifers are black and white.  Kind of like an Oreo cookie look or a skunk look.

I had to wash out my stock trailer and the rubber floor mats when I was done moving the cattle.

I could have used my rancher girl Tammy to help me with opening and closing gates as I drove through them and to help me wash out my stock trailer.  She'll be here Wednesday.

Bonfire wood

Tuesday I got some starter wood for my tree stump bonfires.  Tammy will be here Wednesday to visit me for almost three weeks and she likes bonfires.  And since I have more tree stumps to get rid of... it is a win-win situation for us.

There is a business down the road that does old wood and log work and they have a scrap wood pile.  The owner lets me take what I want as it saves him from later burning or getting rid of the pile.

Since Tammy is still healing from her fractured shoulder she wouldn't be able to help me get the wood this year.  Other times when we got the scrap wood Tammy hasn't been enthusiastic in loading my pickup with it.  I get the pickup half loaded and she thinks it is enough wood.  Then a few days and a few bonfires later we had to go get more wood.

So I took the opportunity to get full two pickup loads of wood before she arrives.  That should cover most of the bonfires I hope to have when Tammy is here.

Now I need to get to digging some around a number of tree stumps to get them ready for burning.

Broken branches, pocket gophers, trivia

When I was out in the middle pasture I came across a tree that had broken branches from the snow this winter.  Also, the branches stacked at the base of the tree trunk are similarly broken branches from previous years.

Also I am up to four pocket gophers trapped this year.  And I still haven't made an effort to get out and set all my traps.  I run across some dirt mounds when working on something else; I quickly set a trap and the next day I have a dead pocket gopher.  Another sign that I have eradicated the regular gophers last year as today, for the very first time, I found and trapped pocket gophers in the very heart of the former domain of the regular gophers. 

Yesterday I won a $10 gift certificate to a local restaurant for knowing a trivia question on the radio.  In 1626 Peter Minuit bought what island using trinkets?   I seem to remember the trivia question as also indicating that he also discovered the island, but that is not true another European explorer discovered the island years earlier.  The answer?  Manhattan

Newer corral gate

Last week I replaced the corral gate between the corral and the yard.  The corral had a 12' gate and I replaced it with one of my newer 16' gates.

The longer gate length meant I had to alter the corral fence.

In addition to replacing the fence boards on each side of the gate I replaced the old post (which was rotten and fell over once I removed the boards from the post) with a newer heavier post, a post that should be able to hold a heavy 16' gate.

Even though the post already had lag bolts to hold the gate, they were in the wrong locations and I had to move them for my newer gate.

I didn't widen just only one side of the gate.  Due to the barn and the tool shed locations it was better to widen a little on each side.  The south (left) side board length was 9' instead of the typical 8' so I made the new length 8'.  The board lengths on the north (right) are 6 and 1/2 ft each for some reason.  In the future I plan to replace these boards with poles.  Once that is done the entire fence on the east side of the corral will be poles and not boards.

Here is a photo of the newer gate.  Here I am in the process of changing the 9' fence section to be a 8' fence section of poles.

Here it is done.  The gate is not completely closed in the photo.  That is why the gate doesn't look to be aligned correctly.

Since I rebuilt the fence on the left side of the gate, I also rebuilt the fence around the water trough and leading to the gate that goes to the barn.  The top post is part of a tree branch I had rescued from the creek across the road.  The beavers had used it when making one of their dams.  The branch is surprisingly solid, and since I didn't have any other poles this length I used the branch even if it isn't completely straight.  I think the bend adds character, and it helps that the old post on the left is slightly higher than the old post on the right.

In the past I found the cattle will put their head through the pole fence to reach the grass in the yard.  One time they broke a pole.  Since then I put wire fencing over the poles to prevent the cattle from getting their head through the poles, as you can see in the rebuilt fence on the left side in the preceding photo.

This newer gate is easier to open than the old gate.  I had no problem with the old gate as I knew how to handle the gate handle.  This newer gate is heavier than the old gate, and while I have the gate balanced pretty good on the post, the far end of the gate does hang down a little due to its length and weight, and with the uneven ground one does have to lift the gate over a few high areas.  Once the ground around the post settles and hardens I'll know better how the gate swing open wide.  Right now the gate's weight makes the post lean over when the gate is open wide.

Another nice feature of the pole fence is that it doesn't have to be painted - unlike the old corral fence.  I have enough fence for Tammy to paint to keep her busy for a long time. 

You and Happiness

While there are many ways to get to happiness, and it can look complicated, happiness can be easy.

Wooden duck

Sunday as I walked along the river I noticed this wooden duck floating against a snag along the river bank.  I rescued it.  The duck looks like it needs some washing as the dirty river water left its mark.

Tree stump sap

Sunday I chopped some side roots from a tree stump I had partially dug last year.  This tree has been dead over 10 years, and maybe much longer than that.  I had burnt it down to ground level seven or eight years ago, and last year I dug around the stump for further burning this year.

Imagine my surprise when I got splattered by liquid tree sap when my axe chopped through a side root.  The stump is from a Western Larch (Tamarack) tree so I shouldn't have been totally surprised.  The same thing happen to me a year or two ago as I chopped another Western Larch tree stump.

Here is where I chopped through the root and the sap came running out.

First Pocket Gopher

I trapped my first pocket gopher of the year.  I should have been out hunting them earlier but I've been busy.

On Saturday I came across a fresh dirt mound just outside the corral that I couldn't ignore and I then set a trap.  This morning I found a dead pocket gopher in the trap.