Sa far, so good

I cannot comment enough about how awesome our weather has been. Sun, sun and more sun with average to above average temperatures. I may need reminding about how nice it was about the middle of July when I am complaining. I had a busy week planned and needed things to go relatively smoothly for all my goals to be accomplished. So far this has been an excellent week. My built in sense of cynicism is really making me think some disaster looms. Hopefully the lump on my shin courtesy of a kicking calf today is the balance to a stellar week.

I got a couple more loads of cow calf pairs hauled home today and also got everybody else fed and checked. I put out what I decided was the last bale of hay for the season on Monday night for the babysitter cows. They have hardly touched it as the home place pasture is starting to grow nicely. There is really something special about getting into spring and not having the daily hay feeding. I am hoping by next week at this time hay feeding will be a few bales of grass straw once a week. That will be exciting so I can get rested up for irrigation season which is always exciting in a puke kind of way.

The irrigation itself is a pain but what really irks you is that water is being used to grow grass for a cow that thanks you by shitting all over the aluminum pipe, usually right where the balance point is for moving it by hand. Luckily there is never any manure on the pipes in the alfalfa hay field because the cows do not have access. The fact that you work all summer moving pipe to grow hay that eventually is just going to be a cowpie in the winter does irk you just the same.

Tomorrow I am taking a load of calves to the auction in Toppenish barring any train wrecks in the morning. I have the main group of spring calving cows down to a manageable group in Basin City. There is one cow that has spent more of the winter outside in the sagebrush than in the corn field. I gave up on putting her in daily back in January. The field is very remote and although she preferred dry cheatgrass to dry cornstalks she was within sight distance most days. She must have sensed it was time to go home because today she was in the corn field with her calf that I am guessing is a good week old. With any luck I will have all the rest of those cows home on Friday.

I had just come in the house tonight and was really looking forward to relaxing a bit. I also had 172 unread emails in my “business” email box because I had ignored it for 3 days. I then remembered I had a county cattlemen’s meeting tonight in Connell. So after some soap, water and ibuprofen I was on my way to Connell. We had an excellent turnout tonight and a good meeting. I was hoping to write a better blog post tonight but I am really beat and tomorrow is another busy day so this is all for tonight.

Today’s real environmentalist species found on the ranch is the redtailed hawk aka Buteo jamaicensis.

Today’s picture is calf number 0808w born earlier this week. I like the spot of white on the top of his nose.