Fall: Come and gone

This has been a weird weather year..  We had a hard cold winter, followed by a cold wet killer spring.  The summer was brief and rainy.  We started haying three weeks late, but then had an Indian Summer which allowed us to finish the haying–three weeks later than usual.  In the midst of all this, we have been moving.

When my Dad died last Christmas, we decided to do a few minor upgrades to his house.  That house is the home that my grandparents built in 1916 or so.  The “Big House” and the horse barn were built by a couple of Swedish brothers. who built several of the beautiful old ranch homes in our valley.  We also decided to shore up the crumbling foundation of the historic horse barn, and of the even older cow barn, which was on the headquarters when my grandfather, George Salisbury and his bride Emma, bought it from Oscar Beeler in the early 1900′s.

Our plan was for us to finish the remodeling and move into the big house in early summer, and for our daughter Meghan, her husband Brian, and their four kids to move into our house, across the driveway, affording them more room.  We are not done yet.  Our minor remodel has turned into gutting most of the interior walls and replacing the heating, plumbing and electrical systems, as well as the insulation.  We installed drains so the basement wouldn’t flood annually, or when we left the lawn sprinklers too close to the house.  In the meantime, the nicely finished downstairs at our old house flooded up to the flooring.  We could not figure out why since it hadn’t happened in previous wet springs.  In early October, it was still flooding, so we bit the bullet, dug out the foundation and replaced the French drains.  After much backhoeing, we discovered that a NEW spring had sprung just uphill from the house.  I pointed out that the homesteaders often built their homes atop springs so they would have inside water.  Now we have diverted the spring water, gutted the downstairs, and replaced the drainage system.

Oh, and we had to replace the septic tank at the cookhouse after it collapsed from the weight of saturated soil.  I relate all this as my excuse as to why I haven’t posted much lately.  And of course, all the usual ranch work has gone on.  Now I seem to notice that the trees, which were nicely green six weeks ago, and lovely shades of yellow and orange just three weeks ago, are bare.  Summer, we hardly knew ye!

Dunkin with lamb buddies, Home Ranch

Sheep crossing the Battle Creek bridge, Home Ranch

Maeve, Suzie and puppies

Willow with wasp nest

Squaw Mountain with branches

The new spring above the foundation

Gutting the basement

Replacement heifers, Sheep Mountain pasture

Maeve, Seamus & Siobhan with Aveena, Beeler Draw

Tiarnan & McCoy: plotting the future

 

Great crew!

Johanna with Dunkin at shearing

July is finally here.  I feel like we haven’t looked up since we left the Red Desert with the ewes in mid-April.  Finally, all the ewes and lambs and all the cows and calves are on their summer Forest permits.

We have a fine crew of Peruvian employees (as well as young ladies from Germany, friends, family and American employees).  Their families often check the blog in hopes of seeing pictures of these men, who leave home for three years at a time to seek their fortune as sheepherders in the American West.  Our Germans, Inka and Johanna, were seeking adventure and stories to tell.  Here are some photos of these good folks.

Inka & Johanna with vaccine

Inka with cows and calves

Sarah, sunburned at shearing

                                                         Seamus, branding, Home Ranch

Siobhan sprinkling Blood Stop

Richar and Nene, Powder Flat, March

Salomon & Seamus at sheepcamp

Julia & Simeon with tarp, docking

Simeon, Siobhan, Pepe & Bahnay, counting

Seamus & Pepe contemplating brand

Pepe & Antonio--go team!

McCoy, Megan & Savanah--cattle crew

Afrenio loading wool, Badwater

2011 wool clip

2011 docking crew

Sarah, Inka Siobhan & Johanna with deceased rattlesnake, Loco

McCoy, Sharon, Meghan & Tiarnan--branding crew

Tom, Savanah & Eamon loading heifers-Red Desert

 

April is the cruelest month (and May is kinda tough too!)

It has been a tough cold spring.  I haven’t posted lately due to computer issues (now hopefully resolved) and the shear volume of work, as we have trailed, sheared, trailed again and started lambing the sheep, and finished (almost) calving and commenced branding.  All this has been complicated by rain, wind, and just real cold weather.

I can watch on TV as floodgates along the Mississippi and its tributaries are opened, or I can look out my window at Battle Creek creeping out into our meadows.

We do not have near the flooding that folks do in the Midwest, but Pat, Eamon and I spent a morning this week helping our neighbors sandbag as they try to keep their riverside businesses from being inundated.  We are not at high water yet, due to unseasonably cold weather.  The mountain Sno-tels (which measure water content in the remaining snow pack) are at over 200%, and it keeps raining and snowing.  The slow melt has given folks time to sandbag and move things to higher ground.

We are asked if our house is in danger of flooding, but since we live on a hill, the whole valley would really be in trouble if we were underwater.  Some of the roads are closed due to mudslides.

As we watch farmlands and rural communities along the Mississippi being flooded in order to save downstream cities and structures, it makes us think about what we value.  While no one wants to see New Orleans flooded, again, and especially no one wants to see chemical factories and oil refineries awash, we do wonder about the crops being lost.  My husband said, “If those flooded farms were their only source of food, they would look at this differently.”

This cold wet spring follows a hard winter (hence the heavy snowpack).  It has been tough on livestock and the wildlife, as well as people.  It was the coldest shearing I ever remember, with the corral crew bundled from head to toe.  I, in particular, was “all wooled up”.  I had on a wool hat, sweater, long underwear and socks, in addition to a down vest and jeans.  I felt the ewes were looking at me with longing (and possibly resentment) as we sent them to have their own wool coats removed.  Even the shearers, in the shed and working hard all day, wore sweatshirts with hoods.

We arrived late on the lambing grounds, since we were trying to hold out for growing grass.  The moisture is good, but the cold weather makes the grass hold back.  Like us, it is looking for sunshine.  We had to pick up a quite a few lambs along the trail.  We have only been able to use the lower lambing grounds so far, since Loco, 500 feet higher, is still snowy and the roads into that area are still drifted over.

Two years ago, we had a hard winter followed by a wet spring.  We do not normally dock lambs (a June job) in the rain, but that year we only quit when we were threatened by lightening.  By the time you read this, we will hopefully be docking lambs on bright sunny days with lush grass all around.

I am sympathetic to our friends in New Mexico and Texas, where drought and wildfires continue to ravage the landscape.  We’d love to send some of this rainy weather and cool days your way!  Our friends in Arizona and California will surely be grateful for the floodwaters headed for Lake Powell and Lake Mead.

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