We woke up to blue skies this morning. What a joy!
Linda
Cultivating and Packing Rows
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Author Archives: Dayphoto
Beans are Planted —Now for Cutting Hay
The smoke from the fires is still thick here. You can see it all around even close to you. I can not imagine what it would be like to be in the midst of the fire itself. This is bad enough.
First Terry opens the field
Then Misty cuts while Terry watches
Then on her own.
This is not an easy machine to drive since you don’t use a stirring wheel, but
levers!
One field down. One more to go. But first the corn has to be cultivated and the rows packed so the water can be set in it.
The smoke filled canyons
Watching the setting sun through the smoke.
Linda
Indian Scout Homesteads at Harts Basin; Valley Still Yields Artifacts (May 1958)
Wind, Smoke, Alfalfa and Planting Beans
The ground is at the right moisture for planting the last of this years crop…the pinto beans
It will take Terry about two days get the pinto bean fields planted.
Of course everything always comes together at the same time
The alfalfa has just the right amount of bloom to be cut.
First things first. First the pinto beans, then on Monday or Tuesday the alfalfa will be cut. It take alfalfa about a week in hot drying weather to turn into hay. Then there is the baling the stacking and the hay customers.
We really like our hay customers, everyone that comes out is fun to see again. Terry also sells his hay to the Delta Elevator.
The smoke you see blowing in is from the fires in Utah and Arizona. It’s always sad that summer has to bring with it forest fires.
Anyway, I’m glad its summer!
Linda
The Last Day of Work
Friday was my last day at work.
We have a new Director so he asked me if I would be interested in coming in on Friday instead of Monday as my last day of work.
I said SURE!
Today is the start of the rest of my newly retired life!
Linda
Fuzzy Blogging on Friday
A Chicken Goes Missing
Mom-mom came up last night and said that a horrible thing had happened at her chicken pen…one of the hens was missing.
I, Fuzzy, was paying lots of attention to what was being said, but Boomer and Hank were not. So I continued to listen very carefully. In order to not repeat everything here are the high points:
- Mom-mom only has four chickens
- All the chickens love Mom-mom and let her pet them and the kids pack them around
- The chickens are only allowed out of the chicken run when Mom-mom is home
- Hank doesn’t get to stay close to the chickens because he gets that ‘gleam in his eye’ that Mom-mom doesn’t like
- (You know the one whereby we dogs get that fixated look, the mouth begins to drool, and the ears are pricked forward and pointing right at the chicken)
Mom-mom let the chickens out to scratch and scramble in the yard
When it was time to come in for the night one chicken, Fluffy Cluck, didn’t return
There was no body, no pile of feathers, no evidence of any kind of what may have happened to Fluffy Cluck
I knew I was going to have to find out; it would also give me a chance to show Boomer how to find lost chickens.
I waited until Mom-mom and the kids and Hank went home, Mom and Dad finished their chores and went inside for the night.
It was a beautiful moonlit night. Boomer was up for the adventure so off we went. We took a short-cut through the little growing corn plants, if Dad saw us he would have yelled at us to get out of the corn field, but (he he) Dad was inside.
We made it down there in no time, I headed straight there, but Boomer had to follow his nose everywhere but straight. That boy! 
Once there I told Boomer what we were up to and what we had to do—find Fluffy Cluck! I bet she was somewhere in the yard or under a bush pile, maybe down by the goat pen hiding out in the jump’n pile.
See Mom-mom puts these logs all together so the two goats can climb and jump and play ‘King of the Mountain’ if they want too.
We checked to see if Hank was hanging out until it was time for him to go inside and sleep next to Blade’s bed, he wasn’t outside.
I was a little disappointed I thought it might give me a chance to teach Hank something too.
Anyway off we trotted to the hen house….yep everything was locked up tight, no open doors, the big human door was shut, the door to the run was shut, I had Boom jump up to see if the nest boxes were closed (he enjoyed that) yep– they were. The gate to the run was shut.
Good. All as it should be.
Now to find the hen or what happened to the hen.
Boomer was all business, I showed him the smell of Fluffy Cluck, Boomer had never smelled real live chicken before so for a little while for Boomer to focus.
Once we got all the odors separated out we set out to find out what happened to Fluffy Cluck.
That was one busy bird…whew! Took us at least an hour to follow her zigzag all over the yard, she was here and she was there and she was everywhere. Gradually we sniffed our way to the goat pen…just as I thought. There she was.
We had a long talk with her…she was pretty sleepy and had a hard time focusing but I think we convinced her that she really needed to sleep with the rest of the girls at night.
She told us she had planned on it but she was really enjoying scratching around in the wood pile and when she realized how late it was she was just way too sleepy to make it back to the hen house.
Satisfied that we had accomplished what we sat out to do-Find Fluffy Cluck– we headed back home. We got there just ahead of the time when Dad goes out to check the water (around 1:00 in the morning) so we went with him instead of to bed.
I must say, I’m really rather tired this morning, but Boomer says he is ready to go and do something again.
Kids.
Fuzzy
The Beauty of “Old Glory”
The girls and I decorated graves yesterday and stayed for the VFW Memorial service. Always a moving time. I can never see or hear Taps and not think of those who gave thier lives to keep us free…
Linda
Sunday May 29, 2011
Outside of irrigating there wasn’t a lot we could do on Sunday. The wind was horrible..two days of hard wind. Blowing in gusts from 45 to 80 miles and hour. You have to walk bent over just to make it across the ditch bank.
We lost some of the shingles off the chicken house and some tin off the cow shed. They can all be fixed, nothing like what others have had to go through.
Anyway, we decided to take a little ride up on the plateau to see what the snow melt looked like (which reminds me the weather sites say this wind is being caused from melting snow and warm air-I’ll be glad when it stablizes).
We met water going up. The rivers are running full-wide and scary. Creeks are full and roaring, water in lots of places that will just be a memory come July.
The cattle have not be allowed to enter public lands as of yet, still to wet. But the grass was starting to look good on top.
The wind was bad up there also. But not like down in the valleys.
This is what it looked like on our way back down. Wind full of dirt.
The road we were on is call Cottonwood road (501) Terry says it really needs to be called dry as a bone road. 🙂
Even so, some of the wild flowers were starting to bloom.
It’s still blowing today, but the sky is blue. It’s also cold. 80+ yesterday and only around 60 today.
Tomorrow this is suppose to out of here and then the heat settles in.
I still enjoy this time of year lots better than winter. I really don’t even mind the wind, but when the long dark dreary days of winter comes … I just endure.
Happy Memorial Day, everyone!
Linda
Odd Cloud
I wasn’t sure what I was looking upon….
A jet stream,
Maybe…
(More than likely)
Linda
Fuzzy Blogging on Friday
Boomer and Hank Find a Badger
Youngsters sure know how to get in trouble, yep they do. I’m really glad I’m not a kid anymore; some of those lessons young whelps have to learn are just hard.
And the one Boomer and Hank learned is one I never had to learn, ever. Maybe it helps that I have always been an outside dog with an important job to do. I was born and raised a cow dog, I’ve seen lots of things over my years, and some lessons I just didn’t learn b.e.c.a.u.s.e. I used my ol head.
Well, we were all at the upper end, Mom-mom and Hank, me and Boomer and Mom and Dad. We were setting the water for the day, no wait a minute for the first four hours of the day. (That is why the little kids weren’t with us—6:00 in the morning is just way too early for those little mites).
Anyway, we were all up there, I was hanging around the ditch because I well, I like the water. I like to bite at the bubbles in the water and I like to get in the water and splash about. Boomer and Hank had trotted off to the pasture and then I saw them sniffing along moving into the brush on top of the hill.
Wait! I’ll let Boomer tell the story—
Well, you see, we were just sniffing along, well actually I was sniffing along, that is how I travel sniffing along seeing what is there and what has been there, Hank he likes to look about. We work well together I’m the nose and he is the eyes. Anyway, we were moving along when all of a sudden we came up on a flat, black sort of skunk-like animal. Geez, neither Hank nor I had ever seen such an animal before. It really didn’t look like anything normal. Hank said it didn’t look like a skunk and he said it didn’t smell like a skunk. I haven’t seen a skunk so I took Hank’s word for it.
Right off we both, decided the best thing to do was set up a bark….maybe Fuzzy would come over and tell us what this was and what to do about it. We started barking as loud as we could WOOF! WOOF! WOOF! BARK! BARK! HOOOOOOOOOW!
Fuzzy didn’t come, neither did Mom or Dad.
We decided maybe we would stop barking and just go on down the hill and see what animal this was. Throughout our furious barking the animal didn’t even move just kept on digging at whatever it was digging at.
“Shall we go find out what it is?” asked Hank.
I agreed and off we ran to the bottom of the hill and screeched to a stop right where the busy not-skunk was working.
“Hey You” Hank called “What are you and what are you doing?”
The not-skunk stopped his work and looked at us; suddenly he showed us his very sharp little white teeth and growled.
WHEW! That was startling. Hank jumped back with a squeak and I backed up hurriedly because I was just about to put my nose on him and give a good sniff.
“I’m a badger” he growled.
Suddenly the badger turned around and took off running as fast as his legs could go.
We learned that Badgers can run real fast.
Both Hank and I filled our lungs with fresh air and gave the Badger a huge blast of barking. I was hoping Fuzzy would hear and come, I forget that Fuzzy doesn’t hear very well, still I was hoping.
We broke into a trot, barking and baying as we followed. Then the badger was gone.
Just gone.
I had to start sniffing and snuffling along until I caught his scent then I followed him to a hole in the ground.
Hank took over at that point, he started digging and pawing at the hole cause he wanted to see where the little guy lived. Dirt was flying everywhere. Sometimes so thick I couldn’t even see Hank.
Suddenly the badger appeared and grabbed Hank’s ears with both of his paws and started pulling Hank’s head down toward his mouth. That badger was so mad he was hissing (did you know badgers can hiss, well they can, and they can also get really mad. REALLY MAD!).
That badger threw both Hank and I into Panic Overload, we both hit reverse and starting throwing up dirt in an effort to get away. I looked back once and that flat little stubby legged monster was still coming after us. We both yelped and ran all the way back to Fuzzy and our people. Scared the living tar out of both of us!
As we tore our way out of the sage and Chico brush (Hank was leading the way) I decided that I wasn’t going to ever mess around with a badger ever again. I was running so fast I ran right into Mom, she didn’t laugh either. Dad said for Mom-mom and Mom to go up the hill and see what scared the dogs so bad.
When they got back they told Dad there was a rather big, mad badger up there digging out a hole so they figured us dogs must have stirred it up.
Thats when Fuzzy told me badgers don’t truck being messed with, ever.
I told Fuzzy I don’t think I have EVER seen anything with such LONG claws, Hank he just shivered and hung right by Mom-moms side until Mom-mom said: “Move. Hank! I can’t even bend over to get a siphon tube.”
Yep, I’m glad there are some lessons I never had to learn.
Fuzzy
And Then I Saw ……………………..
Our corn is looking good
The wind rose up and brought in another batch of rain clouds and rain
Irigating in the rain is really not fun.
But before we were done it looked like the storms were leaving the area.
As the storms left I saw it…a little rainbow!
We woke up to beautiful blue skies this morning and a world smelling fresh and clean.
June 6th is rapidly coming. My assistant has been picked to be my replacement at the Paonia Campus, which is just wonderful. She and I have always worked well together. I wish her lots of luck.
All of my other administrative duties for the main campus have been added to two other administrators work load.
Since I have several days of vacation time left to take, after today, I will only have two more days of work. I wake up worrying at night that I’ve forgotten something that I do or have done in my seventeen years of work, something I need to tell people how to handle. Oh, well, I’ll give them my phone number and they can call me if they really get stuck.
So just like the storms leaving our area, my years of working are rapidly passing down to just days
It has been good.
I look forward to whatever the rest of my life holds.
Linda
