Whether I’m up or down or in or out or just plain overhead … (Train)
when I look to the sky, I know things will be alright!
Everything is fine over here; nothing to worry about.
The sky last night just reminded me of this song by Train.
I’ve been wanting to take you on another one of the passes not far from where we live. This one is right outside of Ridgeway, Colorado
one hour from our house. It is called Owl Creek pass. Elevation is over 10,000 feet.
We travel through the Saw Tooth Mountains and around to the otherside of said mountains
There we stopped and played in the creek (and ate lunch).
Until we got to the Silver Jack Reservoir.
Some of our irrigation water comes from the Silver Jack, some from the Ridgeway Dam,
but most of the water comes out of Taylor Reservoir above Gunnison into Blue Mesa Dam.
We then headed home over Cimaron Pass into Cimaron, Colorado.
That’s the mountains we were just in, way back there in the back…those little blue peaks.
The last cutting of the year is done on this field, but we still need to irrigate. Irrigation goes on until a HUGE killing frost occurs. Sometimes fall is very, very dry here causing the hay to be watered until late September and/or early October.
Of course you don’t want the fields to go into winter wet, but you do need to have them go into winter healthy. The main irrigation water from Blue Mesa Dam, will be turned off the last week in October. Golly, gee, that isn’t very far away now.
The onion farmers are in the swing of harvest with the cow people starting the silage/ensilage harvest on Labor Day.
Alfalfa is harder to get wet and to stay wet, so we put (yes, I help) gated pipe in the middle of field to water the rest of the way. Next year this field of alfalfa will be plowed under and turned into a corn field. Corn is easier to water so we won’t need to use these pipes.
Corn harvest is close now…..very close. Maybe in October, we will just have to wait and see what the weather brings.
Happy Labor Day!
Remember those cute little baby ducks from last July?
Here they are today!
And those scrawny little goats rescued from the Sale Barn
I can’t ever get a good photo of them, because they are so afraid one or the other might get a cookie and the other one won’t.
I carry Vanilla Wafers with me at all times, it’s always nice to have a cookie with a friend.
Sometimes the baler ties a string too tight or a knot slips, usually if the hay is too wet from the dew. When that happens I go out with a wagon and load the broken bales into the wagon. Those bales will be fed up quickly, either to the grandkids’ goats or our cows.
Terry continues to haul in the whole bales with the stack wagon. Sometimes we load some of the bales into the loader.
Since Evan has been in New York, Zooker (his teacup poodle) has been taking turns staying with Misty or us. One thing Zooker LOVES is to ride on the four-wheeler! So even though he was supposed to be with the little kids, I drove down and got him, letting him help us haul hay.
A farm dog he isn’t, but boy has he loved learning how to be one.
With the horrible fires in California and the one on the Uncompahgre Plateau, we are experiencing lots and lots of smoke in the air.
Although, the sunrises are beautiful, how it came to be is horrifyingly sad.
There are trees to climb, and tree houses to play in
Catnip to roll upon
And naps to take. BLISS!
It was a heavy quick storm, the moisture was nice. It was in town and not on the hay fields! 🙂
If we are lucky and the weather holds we will have a fourth cutting. So far no freeze yet. BUT we have had a killing frost on Labor Day. It doesn’t happen often, but it has happened. Time will tell. Time will tell.
Summer is going and Fall is approaching.
Sigh!
Although, I really do like the warm days and the cooler evenings, it’s winter that I dread. And it looks like it is coming very early this year. We only had about two weeks of really hot weather, so I figure we only had about two weeks of summer.
Other signs are out there, the song birds have flown, the hummers have left, the milkweed is blowing and the cattails are starting to split. All this started about the middle of August…now this
