Photo of the Day: Marley's Birthday

Photo by Tera on iPhone -- 5/18/2016

Marley got a bicycle for her birthday. The girls took a ride after we got home from Ani's baseball game. (Ani hit a home run!) Happy Birthday Marley!

Photo of the Day: Final Calf of the Season

(Photo by John on iPad)

I'm planning on posting a daily photo of our life on the ranch. Started yesterday without much fanfare, posting that photo Korin took with her phone of our current fencing project.

Today's photo is of our newest calf, born last night. Yesterday we had our second-to-last calf of the year and today, we're officially done calving. May 16th.

Photo of the Day: Fencing

(Photo by Korin)

In this photo, Emma and I are working on the fence that we've been slowly constructing this spring to keep the cows out of the alfalfa field. We intend to keep the cows down in the creek bottom for a few weeks to allow the summer pasture on the ranch hill some time to get established. But before we can do that we have to keep the hayfields out of their reach. Last year the conditions, along with overgrazing really took its toll up there. On Friday I went up the hill to look things over and the grass was taller than I've ever seen it--starting to develop seed heads, even! As you can see from this photo, conditions have been great for growing grass.

Calving Season 2014 -- 80% Complete

Nicholas and I went out this evening to give the cows a bite to eat and take some photos of the new calves with Tera's new iPhone that my brother Joe hooked us up with! Here are a few of the pics we took:

Nicholas on Big Red! Still kicking butt since 1983

# 14 with her bull calf, born on February 15th.

Horny's bull calf. Her first. My first solo pull. (see rancherteacher.wordpress.com for the story) 

The latest member. #13's bull calf. Born last night. Lively and very vocal!

Two of the more recent calves exchanging pleasantries.

A Load of Hay

Finally got our first load of hay into the barn yesterday, just in time, too.  Thunderstorms are dousing the freshly cut field as we speak.  Had an awesome hay crew...Elias and his friend from Norway were here to help out--which was a tremendous help.  Korin isn't too shabby at tossing bales around either.  In the end we got about 200 really nice bales of alfalfa--20 days of feed for the cows.  Got to try out my "new" baler I bought from an old timer in Curlew.  It worked great after 10+ years of sitting in a field.  Blessed.

Fishin' Toroda

Nicholas and I had a blast fishing the creek today.  First time since it opened.  He's a good creek fisherman, probably caught more than me, but daddy got the trophy...a 12 inch rainbow.  Reminded me of catching rainbows with my Grandma Lena.  Along the way I told all the stories Grandma used to tell me while we fished the creek together--like using the pectoral fin of her first fish for bait and never having to bait her hook again all day.  Love where we live!  

The End of June

June is a fun month.  School lets out and there's not a lot of haying to worry about, yet.  This year we've had our stress about the alfalfa seed germinating, but the rain these last few weeks has helped us out greatly.  Tera and I sat at the picnic table under a tarp and enjoyed an hour-long thunderstorm, complete with a steady rain.  I made an audio recording of the event using Tera's kindle and an app called soundcloud (fairly ironic, yes?).  You can listen to it here: http://snd.sc/10vrj6m

Then, July hit and bang we're in the nineties...and muggy...dang!  Looking forward to Marlene and Hans and their friends and my Momma Linda coming for a visit this week!  Tractor is broken down, alfalfa needs water, but hey, why worry?  July is just July.  And summer is for relaxing...    

We haven't been taking too many pictures lately, but here are a few:

Joe Baker and Abby and Kort on a hike up the Ranch Hill.  

Emma Lena and Annika showing off their newly planted Basil
and various flowers.

Annika and Dad on the rope swing at Beaver Lake.