Broken, broken, broken

First:  this afternoon I discovered a vehicle had gone into my ditch and torn up a small approach to the hayfield.  From the looks of the damage it was a truck.  Dirt from the ditch was on half of the right lane of the road.  Another pile of dirt (two wheelbarrow loads) were on the side of the road at my neighbor's driveway.  While I was clearing the dirt near the approach the neighbor drove by and told me it was from a potato semi-truck and trailer.  He saw the truck stop at his driveway and the driver clean the dirt out of the wheel wells.

From the direction the truck must have been loaded with potatoes.  That would explain the amount of dirt torn up in the ground and tossed on the road.  It took almost two hours to clean up.  I called the county road department to come look at the scene as the pavement was broken where the tires when into the ditch.  The truck didn't tip over onto my fence, though a few strands of barb wire were broken and a post is leaning.  I'll fix it tomorrow.

After I cleaned the dirt up:

Second: Jan's dad is back from Arizona.  He will be 100 years old in a few weeks.  Not bad for 100 years old though I notice he isn't as sharp as a few years back.  Several times he would ask a question to which I answered earlier.  And he had a habit of constantly looking stuff which made helping him slower.

They needed my help in towing his trailer to a local campground and parking it.  Once we were ready to start I discovered his pickup battery was dead.  Jan had a battery charger with a boost assist.  That only got enough power to get the dashboard lights on when I turned the key.  Initially the pickup's lights and horn sounded when we hooked up the charger and I wondered if the security system was somehow preventing the pickup from starting.  The pickup's manual was a mess and once I straightened it out I found it didn't answer much.  I tried the pickup again and this time it started.

The rest of the move went well.  No problem towing the 21 foot trailer or parking it.  I have experience towing a stock trailer and parking it.


Third: in the evening when re-filling the water trough I discovered the cattle broke a gate post in the corral fence. I shouldn't be surprised as earlier in the day I saw a cow scratching her head on the post and gate.  Another fix-it project for tomorrow.  Momma is still the same: no calf.

So I got nothing done today that I had planned to do.

Metal feeder break

The cattle broke the heavy duty metal feeder.  I guess I shouldn't be so surprised after hearing the feeder groan numerous times when the cattle pressed against it when eating.

Here you can see where both the top and bottom rings were broken.  Another section had just the bottom ring broken.

This was more than just drill and bolt a piece of metal to patch the breaks.  Wyatt, my neighbor, is an excellent welder and he fixed the feeder for me.  First I had to take the feeder apart to get it over to his house.

Here is the section with only the bottom break after it was fixed and reinforced. A few other support areas had cracks and Wyatt welded them too.

I had to get a new bale for the feeder, then bolt and reattach the three sections around the bale. You can see where the ice remained from where the previous bales sat in the feeder.  The rest of the corral is starting to dry up.  One doesn't need to use the pickup's four wheel drive to cross the corral now.

Thumb oweee

Today when cutting a tree branch the hand saw jumped the cut and started on my thumb nearby.  What annoys me is that just before this happened I thought it possibly could happen yet I continued to saw.  The second dumb move was not wearing gloves.  I had worn them earlier but took them off for a minute and forgot to put them back on.

Tammy was at work which is just as well as she get grossed out when I have a bloody injury.  I went over to my neighbor Jan to get the cut bandaged.  Victoria, Bob's health aid worker, was at the house so she helped also.

I was in the pasture when the injury happened.  The cut was deep and I bleed easily.  My fingers were dirty so I used my tongue to apply pressure on the wound until I got over to Jan's house.  I didn't realize the blood would get all over my mouth and face and Jan initially thought I had injured my mouth.

While deep, the cut did not reach the bone and doesn't appear to have cut any tendons.  Also the cut was clean.  Guess using my tongue was a smart move.

My thumb is sore.

Yup.  I bleed.

More snow

It snowed much of last night.  I don't know how much snow we had gotten but it looks like 2 to 3 inches.  By evening most of the snow had melted.  March came in like a lion.  Isn't it time to go out like a lamb?  I guess Mother Nature is waiting to the very last day to do that.

This morning Daisy wanted outside at 5 am.  I let her outside thinking with all the snow she would come back in quickly.

Nope.

She zoomed all around the perimeter of the house and then over to the garage.  Then over to the patio.  The last I had seen her was when she took off like a rocket and ran to the pole shed.  She never came back inside the house until after 4 pm.  The snow didn't faze her at all.  I think she rather liked running through it.

She is back being grounded.

Manure and snow

The corral is covered in manure. Once it gets closer for the cattle to calve I want to keep them inside the corral and not let them out into a pasture.  Therefore I started to rake up the manure in the corral.  Lots of manure and slow going.

The foreground has been raked, the background has not.

In the pasture you can see the (manure) trail where the cattle walked when the ground was snow covered.

This evening the rain changed to snow.  Winter has been long.

More large hay bales

I got some more hay for my cattle.  I had enough hay till the end of March so I've been looking for more hay this month to last to the end of May.. I estimated I needed a dozen large (1200 lb) bales as the cattle seem to go through these large bales in around five days.

Tim, from whom I bought large bales last year, said he thought he had a dozen bales for me.  His land had lots of standing water and was very muddy so he asked if I could wait till the end of the week.  Perfect, as my land was wet and soft too.

The end of the week came and his land was still muddy and asked if I could wait till Sunday or Monday.  My land was drier but I could wait as I still had hay.

I needed to borrow Dan's trailer to haul the bales and found I had to wait till Tuesday as he was using the trailer through Monday.  That was fine with Tim, but then on Monday Tim called with good and bad news.

The bad news: while he was out of town his daughter sold a bunch of hay and he only has 4 bales left.
The good news: he planned on bringing his trailer to town for work on it and he could deliver the hay for me.

Fifteen minutes later he called to say he actually had six bales, and if I wanted he also had 2 straight alfalfa bales.  No wait, his daughter was waving wildly.  No, he only had one alfalfa bale.  I bought it, even though it was richer than what the cattle need for feed, and also cost me $20 more.

I let Tim know that I don't have a tractor to unload the hay, so if he could load them in a way I could roll them off.

Tim's co-worker arrived with the hay on a tilt trailer.  However, the trailer's bed wouldn't lift to roll the bales off.  We think it was because of a hydraulic leak. The bales were sitting on a flat side and I couldn't roll them.  Tim was in the area and he drove over with a tractor and he pushed the bales off the trailer.

Last year the bales were almost 100% good.  This year it appears four of the bales sat on the ground and the bottom had dirt and rot. I don't think the wetter Winter helped. Yesterday Tammy and I pulled one of the bales to the cattle's feeder and they seem to like it so far.

Here is the fixed gate.  When the truck and trailer drove into the pasture the trailer clipped the post of the right side and broke it off.

The first bale I fed the cattle was the forth one from the left.

After we were done Daisy had to inspect our work.

PRCA rodeo

Tammy won two free tickets to a PRCA rodeo at the Majestic Valley Area.  So we saw the rodeo Saturday night, March 22, the second night of a two round series.

The arena was not full, but there was a decent crowd.  Tammy and I did notice that people could not sit still and there always lots of people moving here and there.

The rodeo lasted a little over two hours and had:

1. Bareback riding
2. Steer wrestling
3. Team Roping
4. Saddle Bronc
5. Tie-down roping
6. Barrel racing
7. Bull riding
8. Mutton busting

Here are a few photos:

Danger, the rodeo clown

Saddle bronc riding

 Team roping

 

Mutton busting.  A half dozen kids tried and only the last boy was able to stay on the sheep the entire time.

Barrel racing

Bull riding.  Out of seven riders only one rider was able to stay on the bull the full 8 seconds.

One bull didn't want to go back into the pen.

Tammy's traveling wine party

Tonight Tammy hosted a Traveling Vineyard home party.  This is the party Tammy tried to hold in January but had to cancel because of a Winter storm.

Tammy had six people here to taste five wines.  Other people wanted to attend but couldn't due to other obligations.

The party went very well and everyone had a great time.  We tasted five wines and learned about wine.  We had cheese, crackers, pizza rolls and chocolate to taste with various wines.  The foods made a big difference in the tastes of the wines.

Daisy behaved herself quite well during the party.  Several Traveling Vineyard consultants live in Billings, Montana and they ran the party via Oovoo on Tammy's computer. Tammy and I poured wine samples and passed out the food. At one point I was worried Daisy was going to press on some computer keys and disrupt the video.  But she didn't.   Daisy did get a little tired of the commotion by the end of the party.

The five wines we tasted were:

(my, and most other people's favorite wines, were the Screaming Goat and the Fissada)

http://www.travelingvineyard.com/wine/2013-screaming-goat-gewurztraminer/

http://www.travelingvineyard.com/wine/2012-leafwing-riesling/

http://www.travelingvineyard.com/wine/2012-perique-pinot-noir/

http://www.travelingvineyard.com/wine/2012-rayado-cabernet-sauvignon/

 http://www.travelingvineyard.com/wine/fissata-red/

Cleaning up the tree

I finished working on cleaning up the "V" box elder tree break (http://www.tallpinesranch.blogspot.com/2014/03/v-tree-break.html).   Daisy helped me.

The parts of the tree not useful for the wood stove.

Daisy supervising the stomping down of the branches.

Yesterday I pulled another hay bale across the corral to the metal feeder.  Lots of mud and manure in the corral.  I needed the four wheel drive ability.

More supervising by Daisy: "Don't forget these branches!"

Everything loaded in a single pickup load

I hauled the branches next to a tree stump in the pasture.  On the to-do list: dig around the stump for later burning.

On the left most pallet: the parts of the "V" tree I will use for firewood after it is dried and split.  It was not the best stacking job as 15 minutes later half of it came tumbling down.