More snow

Yesterday and overnight it rained a lot.  Then this morning it turned to snow.  Plenty of it.  This afternoon Donna had to go to her daughter's place to check on her dog as the dog was ill last night.  That place is higher up.  Might be a snow problem on the drive up.  So I went along to help. 

West of Kalispell the snow was less.  Then less the further west we went.  By the time we got to the daughter's place there was no snow anywhere.  Huh?   I guess the minor cold front that came this morning is just between my place and the daughter's place, and it stayed rain at her place.   Donna lives some miles down the road from me.  She said she thought her place had an inch or more of snow than mine.  The cold front apparently is moving from the NE to the SW.

My front yard.

Middle pasture.

Willow trees again

More photos of the willow trees from yesterday.  Today it rained and was slightly warmer so most of the snow is gone now.

And here is another willow tree.  This one shows the growth the past two years after the beaver ate the trees down.

This year I trimmed some of the lower branches.  Next year I will have to decide whether to trim more branches and try to slowly turn the trees from looking like a bush into more looking like a tree.

Cows and mats

Tomorrow I will have to put out another large hay bale for the cows.  They love to eat the hay.  And some like to step in the feeder with their front legs.

Here is one of heifer calves I am keeping.

Of course hauling cattle, even for a short distance, means manure gets left on the mats in the stock trailer.  Since I only had Fritz I kept him in the back half of the trailer.  Only two mats got messed up - other than a little touch of manure on the end of the front mats.  I left those in the trailer.  These messier mats I took out and left by the water trough.  Too cold to use my pressure washer to clean them. Yesterday snow and cold.  I didn't do anything with the mats.  Today it was slightly warmer and above freezing.  So I cleaned the mats off with buckets of water and hung them to dry.   It is raining tonight and predicted rain and snow tomorrow.  I'll see if they get somewhat dry so I can place them back in the stock trailer.

Fritz the bull

Yesterday afternoon I got my new bull, Fritz. I named him Fritz after the owner.  Donna went with me.  The owner had two bulls for me to choose from.  Both bulls looked good, but we all agreed on which bull seemed to be the better-looking bull.

Fritz was born early Spring, in February or early March.   He is a big boy already and looks to weigh 800 pounds or more.  He is well built and has good features.  The owner has nice cattle which is why I asked if he would raise a bull for me and not make it a steer. The last bull the owner had bought cost him $7000.  Fritz cost me $2000.  The most I ever paid for a bull.  But that is how it is in the cattle business these days.  This year I got the most I ever for my calves.  So of course this year would be the most I ever paid for a bull.   Especially since his genetics appear to be very good.   In the evening I got the sale report from the livestock where I sold my calves. Young bulls like mine sold for around $2000.

I loaded Fritz up and brought him home.  I placed him in the south corral.  I want him to get adjusted to his new home.  I didn't want him out in the pasture with the other cows in case he decided to immediately try to go back home.  Earlier when I put out a hay bale for the cows I also put out a large hay bale in the south corral for Fritz.  I plan on keeping Fritz in the corral for about a week then let him out to join the cows.

Fritz seems to be doing well.  He does want to go and be with the cows in the north pasture.  At times he moos or calls them.

Fritz seems to have big balls, or testicles as Donna calls them. I wanted to get a photo showing them, but he would always stand with a leg blocking the view of them when I tried to take a photo.

Here are photos from this morning.  Light snow today.  I'm glad I got Fritz yesterday and not today.  The road by my place is slick as ice from the snow.  This evening looking out my front window I saw a vehicle go in and then out of the ditch.  A few minutes later I noticed other cars going slow and some with flashers on as they drove.  I thought it may be because of the vehicle that had gone in and out of the ditch.   I went out to check my mail and saw a pickup had gone in the ditch past where the first went in the ditch.  The other vehicle had used the owner's small approach to get out of the ditch.  So I think this vehicle may be another vehicle.   This vehicle didn't appear to have hit the fence.  Since the fence is solid I slowly and carefully walked over and told the owner about the vehicle in the ditch.  I was right, even though the headlights were on the owner hadn't seen the vehicle in the ditch.  I think it took two tow trucks to get the vehicle out of the steep ditch as I saw two arrive later.   Again, I was glad I didn't have to drive today to get Fritz.

In the afternoon a heifer and a cow took a break from eating hay and came over to meet Fritz.

Isn't Fritz a nice looking bull?

Donna took a photo of the view from my place after we unloaded Fritz.

Time for hay bales for the cows

Today I put out the first large hay bale for the cattle this season.  The hayfield is eaten down pretty well.  No sense over doing the eating of the hayfield.

Because my new bale spear is three long spears, and not one long and two short spears like the old bale spear, it can be difficult to use the spear to lift up the metal hay feeder as the two lower spears want to go into the ground.  With the ground still not frozen I was able to lift the one feeder in the north pasture where the hay bale would go.   So I went and lifted the other feeder in the middle pasture and moved it to position for the next hay bale.  So that is done.

The feeder I put the bale into is the feeder that some legs caught on frozen manure this past Spring when pushing the feeder with my tractor.  The feeder then became a little oval and not round.  Today after I lifted the feeder on its side, the feeder was sitting in a manner where I could use the bottom of the bale spear's attachment and the tractor's arms to push down on the feeder.  I think the feeder is now more round and not oval.   The feeder I fixed is the one in the background with the hay bale in it.

The cows saw what I was doing and came and stood by the gate to watch me work.

Once the hay was put out, I opened the gate and the cows took off to the hay.

12 cows can eat at the feeder at the same time.  I have 15 cows.  So I put out a few piles of hay from the bale nearby so all can eat in the beginning.   The rest of the time the cows rotate when they eat and all don't eat at the same time.

Willow trees by river

It appears the willow trees near the river survived another year from the beavers.  Yay.

New gate installed

The daylight is getting shorter and the temperatures are getting colder, and a little more rain happening every now and then. Less is getting done by me, and projects that would take a day now takes multiple days as I do more than one thing each day.

This project is now old, but before election day I put a new gate into a fence.  Last month when Kelly came by to check things out before hunting season opened, we walked along the fence near where he hunts.  In the lower area near the river in addition to the barb wire fence years ago I had attached some wire sections to make the fence higher.  At that time it was to use up some of these wire sections.  But also make it so the deer didn't jump across the fence.  There was a section where two wire sections meet that were leaning.   Kelly asked that when hunting season opened, since the cattle wouldn't be in this pasture, if he could move these two pieces apart so it would be another area where the deer could cross.  Sure.

Then in the weeks since that visit an extra gate that I have caught my eye.  I should put that gate in the fence near that area.  Kelly wouldn't have to separate two wire fence sections and the gate would provide another crossing point if I ever need to herd cattle back into the pasture if they had made an escape.

I found a couple of not-so-perfect railroad ties to use as posts.  I also found I had two lag bolts.  These were larger than normal lag bolts.   I never could use them in my traditional gates as the bolts were too large. On this gate's hinges I could drill the hinge holes to be a little larger.  And I did.

The next step was to make it so the cattle can't lift the gate off the bolts.  Normally the top hinge is slidable so one can have the top bolt facing downward to hold the gate in place.  But these hinges don't move up and down.  Both bolts would have to face up.  To prevent the gate from being lifted off the bolts, I drilled a hole in each of the hinges.  I would put a nail or wire through the hole to hold the gate in place.

Easier said than done. My drill bits this size were not so sharp and the bolt was very hard solid metal.  I broke all three bits in drilling the first hole.  And it took me over an hour.  To drill the second bolt I went to my neighbor Curtis to ask for advice how to do this better.  He has a drill press, and he drilled a hole in the second bolt in less than a minute.  Gee.  I wish I asked him sooner about this.

Everything was ready.  Now to find the time to do this.  First I needed to finish painting the barn, and other projects.  Then the weather slowed things down.  The day I planned on installing the gate was the day, or day after, hunting season started.  Kelly came by to open the fence liked we had talked about.  I told him of my new gate plan.  He had time so he and I installed the posts and the gate.

I hadn't readied everything and my electric drill hadn't been charged much.  The drill didn't have power to drill a small hole so I could start screwing the lag bolt into the railroad tie.  We ended using a screwdriver and a drill bit to make a starter hole. The lag bolt still didn't want to cut into the railroad tie and screw in.  We used a hammer and sledgehammer to pound the bolts in further - several times - before the lag bolts would then take and screw the rest of the way into the ties.

I'm not used to working with other people on my projects. I got talking and distracted and ended up doing what I normally do.  I made the hole for the top lag bolt at the top of the hinge and not the bottom.  How can I get the gate on both lag bolts?  I couldn't make a new hole as it would be right next to the current hole and would not stay.

Trial and error.  I pounded the top bolt up a little and the bottom bolt down a little.  I tried turning the bolts a little sideways and not straight down.  The gate still would not quite fit onto the bolts. In the above photo you can see the hinge has two spots the bolt goes through.  I pounded the two spots to be closer together.  Almost, almost - not quite.  So close.  I pounded one on of the holes to make it a touch wider and then pounded the hinge so the bolt would slip through the hinge.  Finally - done.  I hope I don't ever have to take this hinge off the railroad tie.  How that would done - who knows!

Here is the fence section I am talking about.

Where the gate will be installed.

The new gate installed.

An accidental photo of my shoes as I worked.

Election day

Another election has come and gone.   I once again served as the chief election judge at my precinct.  For this election I downsized the number of judges on my team as it was just a single ballot to hand out.  I didn't have different ballots for city residents or county residents.  A downsized number of judges meant all my judges had something to do and wouldn't get bored due to lack of work.  Another team had a couple of judges who couldn't work all day for a few reasons.  One of my extra judges then worked for her team.  I'm glad he was able to work at our polling location.   In the future if I am short of judges I can get him back on my team.

I, and the other two chief judges at my polling location, partially set up the night before.  It makes it easier on election day to finish the set up and get the other judges up to date on the latest.   Especially as the day is long as the polls are open from 7 am to 8 pm.

Flathead county had lots of people who were voting at the election department the week before the election.  Add in that 69% or so of voters received an absentee ballot and don't have to show up at the polls.  So I didn't expect as many voters voting in person at the polls this time.  When we opened at 7 am there was a long line at the door waiting to get in.  Much of the day we were busy with voters.  More than I expected.  My precinct had the most voters at 286, a few more than another precinct and even more than the third precinct.  So we got bragging rights for the number of voters we handled.  Statewide 72% of the voters voted so we had a high turnout.

All of our judges go in on potluck for food for the election judges and we had plenty of food and wonderfully made food.

We had a person who came to hand out pamphlets and we had to tell him he had to be 100 feet away from the polling location to do this as this is the law on electioneering in Montana.  He ended up just outside the parking lot.  He stood there and walked back and forth for most of the day.  I doubt anyone went over to talk to him as we never saw anyone do so.  I think his actions therefore were a waste of time.  He must have been paid to do so and that was why he did this for hours and hours and much of the day.

We also had two election observers at our polling location from the Montana Election Observation Initiative.  MTEOI aims to enhance transparency and public understanding about election procedures in Montana, detect and deter electoral malfeasance, and offer evidence-based recommendations for electoral reform to improve the conduct of elections, if warranted.  They watched us all day to see if we were doing things right.  Well one person did.  The other appears to have worked only a half day.   They didn't interfere with us, just sat or walked around and watched.

My last voter came in with his son a minute before the polls closed at 8 pm.  Once he voted we took stuff down, cleaned up and did some final paperwork documenting the ballots and sealing stuff.  Then for my precinct I and another judge took the ballots, register, poll books and other stuff to the election department where we showed with what we had and counted and recounted the number of ballots to make sure everything was there before they took the ballots off to be counted.

It was now 10 pm and time to go home.  Another successful election, and I and my team were happy with what we accomplished.

Stacked firewood

A few days before our recent rain and snow I got the rest of the cut branches stacked in the patio. I barely got it done before the rain started.  Last year and this Summer I left the cut branches out on the stacked logs by the garage.  This was to keep them in the sun and heat so they would dry better and faster.   But the last few weeks I've been moving them bit by bit, wheelbarrow by wheelbarrow, into the patio where they will be protected from the rain and snow.   Alway good to put dry wood in my woodstove in order to heat my house.

Here is the log pile from last year.   I added more branches this year before moving them to the patio.  The second photo is what the log pile looks like now after I moved the cut branches.

Again, I added more branches to the pile after this photo was taken.  So the log pile was even higher as I had to throw the cut branches to the top of the pile.

After this photo was taken last year I cut half of the pile into smaller pieces.  I cut the rest of the pile this Spring.

Now it is time to use the cut branches in my woodstove to heat my house.