Good evening

Ok, so I have not been here for 10 days. I could make all kinds of excuses but the honest answer is I was in Spain as Michelle Obama’s escort. Now that I have that out of the way let me do a blog post. What??? You do not believe me? I am appalled that I have not generated more trust among my readers.

Really it has not been lack of material, being too tired or not having time to post. The real reason I have not been here is basically “crabbiness”. I have actually had some productive, fun and satisfying days since I have last posted. The issue has been my evenings lately. It seems that no matter if my day is great or mediocre my evenings have been about as wonderful as being Whoopi Goldberg’s beauty consultant. It has not been anything in particular but in the last 10 days here are a few gems I have dealt with. An irrigation pump panel that burned to a crisp because of lightning and age I am guessing. A circle that seems to want to get stuck as well as a few blown irrigation risers and a stockwater pump that keeps getting unplugged by cows that cannot find anywhere within 300 acres other than a 10 foot by 3 foot place next to the well to spend their time.

I have been feeling really well and have thought that I am on the cusp of mania but that has allowed me to get many things accomplished. We have experienced a few scorching days lately but overall the summer weather has been good. I have had many days that things went well and I had something I was really looking forward to posting. Then something in the evening has pissed me off and things have fallen apart. Whenever I sit down to this computer in a bad mood I find one thing that makes me feel better and it is not doing a blog post. What I end up doing is going into some political chatroom or message board and saying things that drive other people out of their minds. Somehow being in a bad mood is acceptable if I know I have helped ruin the evening of 3 to 5000 other people.

Finally today things went well and so did my evening. I got up early and changed a bit of water and the pump panel that burned up last week is fixed and ran all night and all day today without incident. After some early morning irrigation I headed to Ellensburg for a monthly Washington Cattlemen’s Association meeting. Today’s meeting was long but productive from my perspective. There were more than a few tense moments of debate on a few issues but I never feel anything less than proud spending time with these industry leaders. I even gave a preview of what it will be like when I take the reins by offering the participants a cold beer at 4 p.m. which seemed to be well received and helped my approval ratings.

We have been getting a few fall calves even though they were not supposed to start before Sunday the 15^th. The calving has gone well but it seems many evenings I have been missing a calf that has caused me to expend time finding it. The first of the first calf heifers calved Saturday without incident which was great. Tonight I got back to the ranch with about 30 minutes of daylight left. Luckily all the fall calving cows and the calves were accounted for in a short time while I stopped along the road and expelled the beer I drank at the end of today’s meeting. Then I went down to the corrals where Chris and Sam were helping Dakota work with her fair steers. These fair steers have been a bright spot and tonight was no exception. As I walked through the fall calving first calf heifers I noticed that there was another new child that was standing up and suckling her mother that had been born without any problems today. It was at this point that I decided at least for today life could not get any better so we finished up and came home. It may seem like a small victory but as far as evenings have been lately I was just happy to come home and not feel the need to make anyone else feel angry just because I was.

Today’s real environmentalist species found on the ranch is the Longspine sandbur aka Cenchrus longispinus.

Today’s picture is of two coming spring calving first calf heifers’ #9904g and #9935g. These two ladies are rarely found more than a few feet apart on any given day at any given time. You would never know these two are half sisters would you?