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Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Caution, Cowman at play






























Many regular bloggers have a thing called “wordless Wednesdays”. Tonight I am not going to use that but I certainly am planning on it in the future as a way to make a blog post without typing something out. Today was just a bit too perfect to be a “wordless” day.

Besides everyday chores I spent most of today building hot wire fence. This “job” is something I very much enjoy doing although it is something that is hard to get motivated for. It really is enjoyable once you get going because of many reasons. The work goes fairly quickly and has very tangible results from a visual standpoint, much unlike paper or office work. There is a positive result from a health standpoint because there is lots of walking involved along with the exercise of pounding in corner posts. Today it was in the mid 40’s with lots of sunshine and for me and my demons that is a huge part of having a good day. All those things are great but the best parts are the quiet solitude and time to think, well besides talking to myself and my conversations with Festus about how the world really ought to be.

Festus and I both had a moment of “oh crap” today. There was one area where I had to ease Griselda (the pickup) down a steep grade in some really tall mustard/cheatgrass as I unwound wire. I was being careful so I did not drop into a huge hole but we did fine and made it to the bottom. As I started to walk back up the hill putting in posts Festus was about 10 yards away and was growling under the tall weed growth. I suspected he had found a pheasant so I walked towards his growling to “flush” said bird. Now when you flush a pheasant or a covey of quail by accident it can startle you so I kind of mentally braced myself for the explosion from the overgrowth. We got an explosion alright, as a mule deer doe exploded about 5 yards in front of us. Festus looked at me as if saying “that is no damn cow but please say ‘sick em’, I on the other hand just let the pee trickle down my leg and tried to quit shaking as the doe made a rapid escape.

I did not quite get the entire fence done but about an hour in the morning means I will be hauling cows to cornstalks tomorrow. I am about 3 weeks later than I wanted to be but these look like really good corn stalks with lots of grain underneath. Here in the Columbia Basin it is an excellent way to feed cows in the winter and is much more cost effective than feeding hay and it also is much preferable when the cows do their own foraging. Not only is hay expensive it does not just feed itself and the first two pictures today show just how big of a savings that can be. When $98 only fills your tank part way you know fuel is expensive. The other two pics today are of some new plastic fence posts I am trying, that worked excellent BTW, and the field of corn that cows will be grazing by this time tomorrow! Remember ALL pictures on this blog can be viewed in full size by clicking on them, hopefully I will have my commenting issue solved SOON!

Just to make my day complete I also did a load of laundry and washed some dishes much to my brides delight and tonight we had a WCA/NCBA conference call discussing the World Trade Organizations ruling on Country of Origin labeling. I am tired but excited tonight, I am so glad that what I do for a living does not actually require me to “work” and I get to spend my days “playing cowman”.

Today’s real environmentalist species found on the ranch is the Northern Harrier aka Circus cyaneus.

Today's YouTube video is from JJ Lawhorn. I thought of this today as Festus and I sat on the tailgate and wired corner insulators. Lyrics are not perfect but not bad.




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