The Adventures of Fuzzy and Boomer on Friday — Another Fire

Posted on March 16, 2012 by Dayphoto

It happened again! We had a huge fire on Tuesday, two miles long. The fire wiped out everything on the west side of the farm, except Mom-mom’s house, barn, and other outbuildings. The firemen were able to stop the fire five feet from all of the structures.

We were all scared!

Boomer and I stayed right with Mom. We rode on the back of the four-wheeler and never left it. (Boomer is really bad about jumping off and heading out to see what there is to see when Mom gets off. He always gets in trouble, but he just gives all of us a Beagle smile and does it again. But this time he listened.) The smoke and the flames were horrible.

The cows all circled up, with the baby calves in the middle, just like the books say they do when there is danger. The cowboys came up and stayed with them just to be sure.

At several points the fire jumped into the hay fields and the corn fields rushing right over to toward Mom, Dad, Boomer and my house. It was frightening. But just the day before Dad had disked all the ends by the gated pipe and the road to our place. That’s what stopped the fire there, not the firemen.

The very next day, Wednesday, the Uncompahgre Ditch Company sent the ditch cleaners down to clean out the canal to ready it for the water next week.

Dad talked to the guys said he had a very huge fire yesterday and would they be extra careful, they said they would and took off.

They didn’t!

They swooshed their 8” propane weed burner and burned everything in sight, even burned up our over 100-year-old cottonwood tree, that made Mom cry. Mom and Dad saw the guy swirl the burner around the base of the tree.

Mom, Boom and I, Mom-mom and Talley hauled water to the tree for most of the afternoon, but it finally burst into flames and left this earth. Mom told all of us that she felt like she lost a very good friend that day.

Now the whole north side and the whole east side of the farm have the fences burned to the ground.

What a mess!

Dad has been busy, getting the fire report, talking to the neighbor about repairs, and getting the ditch company to fix the fences.

Mom says her digital camera is a blessing.

Since one of the very long time ditch companies board member is our neighbor to the north, (by two miles) and we get up before the sun shines, by 6:30 in the morning, Thursday, Dad and board member were touring the damage the ditch company did.

The tree fell over around 8:30 Thursday morning. The Ditch company people wanted it to burn up so they didn’t have very much to clean up. (They made the mess, they clean it up, Dad says. The board member and the manager of the company agreed)

They also agreed to the repair of all the fences on the north and east side of the farm.

Around three o’clock in the afternoon the tree eased itself into the canal where it continued to burn.

8:30 that night the fire trucks were back out to our place, as someone passing by saw the burning tree for the first time and called it in to the fire department.

The ditch company, which hoped that they wouldn’t have much to do, vanished in several streams of water after the fire department got here.

So this is where we are, the day after the Ides of March. Hopefully we are on our way to mending.

At least the west side fences are still standing.

Knock on wood!

Fuzzy

The Day From H#%%

Posted on March 14, 2012 by Dayphoto

A neighbor of ours (2 miles away) decided that today (with 20-30 m.p.h. wind and gusts of wind) was an excellent day to burn one of his ditches.

Well, he got the ditch burnt that is for sure, and the neighbors farm and our farm.

Terry and I are just sick! Sick, sick, sick!

It took the Delta Fire Department, the Olathe Fire Department, the Cedaredge Fire Department and the Lands End Fire Department from Whitewater to put the fire out. (If you get out a map you will see how far some of them had to come to help)

The fire reached our place at 2:30 that afternoon with fire jumping and running over all of our pastures, hillsides and into the corn fields. THANK GOD!!! Terry had disked the ends of the corn or it would have ran right to our house.

The fire also ate it’s way right up to our kids’ barns and chicken house….we had to load up and move out all the goats, chickens, dogs and cats. One of the next door neighbors took Tally, the other kids were in school for part of the time.

The sheriff department had all three roads blocked off from traffic as the smoke was so thick seeing was next to impossible.

The rancher and his daughter and her boyfriend came up and rounded up the cows and calves to keep them out of harms way.

The fire was finally put down at 6:30 that evening. Terry’s equipment was saved, the buildings were saved and no animals lost their lives that we are aware of.

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Terry and I are sick about the loss of the centuries old Chico and Sagebrush, the ancient cactus. What will happen now is the invasive weeds will take over.

Sigh,

Linda

The Adventures of Fuzzy and Boomer on Friday — March

Posted on March 9, 2012 by Dayphoto

Finally, Fuzzy and I, Mom and Dad have made it through the mud days of March. March is spring for us here in Western Colorado…..well, at least our part of Western Colorado.

March is also the time of mud, wind, and little green shoots of weeds and such.

March is still cold. There isn’t much anyone can do about it. Fuzzy and I are still wearing our heavy outside fur, and Mom and Dad are still in their carharts and sometime mud shoes.

But the bulk of the calves

and the lambs have been born and the best of all……the days are growing longer and longer!

Winter’s darkness (which squishes you at both ends of the each and every day) is gone! Gone until sometime next year! GONE!

Fuzz and I love it!

Around here everyone is glad to see March arrive. It’s the time when all the farming starts, and well….that’s what we are about. Stirring the soil, having the seeds delivered, fertilizing the ground, getting everything ready to plant.

Dad has started ‘opening the ground’, which means he is doing tractor work, which means there is always some little grandchild that likes to ride with Grandpa, up and down, up and down. They do get bored after about three rounds, but they still want to be up high on the tractor with Grandpa.

I love helping Dad…we go out and do shovel work together.

Fuzzy would like to go, but he has trouble doing too much. We do lots of chasing of things around the yard, but he really can’t walk much past the haystack area.