October 21
Last Saturday, Andrea checked the water in our ditches and discovered we had none. Another upstream user on the system had diverted all the water to their place. We had no water for the heifers in the orchard and horse pasture, which meant we had to haul water to filled a water tank for them.
The next day I cut off all the willow and aspen shoots in the pen below the barn; those darn things are trying to take over several pens. That afternoon I drew horses on T-shirts (little ones for James and Joseph, big ones for Heather and Gregory) to send with Heather and the boys for Christmas, and not have to mail them.
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Nights have been cold, and Tuesday morning I built a fire in our wood stove for the first time this fall. Andrea took me to the dentist and did our town errands while the dentist put a temporary cap on one of my broken teeth. A crown will be applied later. Then we went to see our neighbour Bob Minor at the care center. He was doing better, able to get around in a wheelchair, and planning to go home on Thursday.
Wednesday, Lynn got up early and Jim took him to town for his appointment with the heart doctor for a checkup and EKG. His checkup went well.
That afternoon granddaughter Heather brought her three boys to visit. They’ve been staying at her folks’ place the past few days. Andrea took Christopher and Joseph to her house to play on the trampoline. They had fun taking turns driving Christopher’s little tractor and riding in the little wagon behind it.
James stayed here with his mom and baby brother while she looked through old family photo albums, interested in some of the family history. After chores we all had supper here.
Yesterday was warm in the afternoon, which was nice for the kids to play outside. They played with toy tractors and trucks in the dirt in the driveway below the lane, and pretended to make cakes (sifting dirt like it was flour). Lynn’s sister Jenelle came out to visit and we watched the kids play, then had lunch here.
Heather and her boys had lunch with us again today.
October 29
Early Saturday we had ¾ inch of rain, the most rain since June, with snow on the mountains. It stopped raining by 9 a.m. and Andrea helped me put another piece of tin on the back of the calving barn where the old boards are rotting from ground moisture and snow that slides off the roof.
The next day Heather and boys headed back to Canada. Michael and Carolyn convoyed with them to the border, where Gregory and his folks met them. They all had dinner together in a little town across the border, then headed home.
Andrea shut off our ditches for winter. There has been little or no water flowing anyway, but the ditches needed to be shut off and head gates pounded down tight so no water will come through later and make ice floes across our fields.
Monday Andrea gathered more of the hot wire along the lower part of the field by her house. She’s trying to get all the temporary fence picked up from our rotational grazing before the ground freezes. It’s hard to take out posts or the snow gets too deep. We don’t want deer stringing wires all over.
We moved the bred heifers from the horse pasture to the big pasture above it; there’s enough grass there (that regrew after the cows grazed it during breeding season) to last several weeks.
When Andrea came back from town that evening, it was dark when she came in our driveway. She nearly ran into two horses fighting with Shiloh at the gate to her pen. I went to help her deal with the stray horses. By then they’d gone below the driveway and were next to Sprout and Shiloh’s pens and fighting with Sprout. We chased them to the driveway and up our lane and shut the lane gate. They tried to get back through it, so Andrea chased them down the road.
Tuesday evening Heather and Gregory called to tell us James was able to have the cast taken off; his broken elbow healed enough that the pins could be removed.
Thursday afternoon Dani and Andrea helped me put deer netting around the two rows of round bales (alfalfa for the weaned heifers this winter). The deer have been digging into some of the bales and making a mess.
Today Andrea, Dani and Dani’s boyfriend Roger rented a car carrier trailer and headed to Bonanza, Oregon (16-hour drive) in Andrea’s pickup — hauling Roger’s mom’s car back to her and planning to haul Dani’s pickup home.
November 7
Andrea and kids finally got to Bonanza at 6 a.m. Sunday, slept a few hours, then headed home with Dani’s pickup and all her other things she left there earlier this fall. It was a long, slow trip; they were exhausted when they got back Monday morning. The bad tire on the trailer held up all the way, though they had to stop at gas stations to put more air in it.
Sunday afternoon Lynn and I used his four-wheeler and a cart to haul dirt and small rocks that we gathered along our driveway. We offloaded it next to the bull’s feed manger to build up that area so it won’t be so muddy this winter.
On Monday, Allan Probst brought several dump truck loads of dirt/gravel for our lane, from the top of our driveway out to the main road and smoothed it with his skid steer. That part of the lane has been bad for years.
That afternoon Andrea and I moved the cows from the swamp pasture to the field below heifer hill. Hopefully the new pasture will last several weeks.
By the next day the stress and lack of sleep (driving for more than 32 hours last weekend) was catching up with Andrea; she has a bad cold.
Saturday the weather was nasty — snow/sleet and strong winds. It almost blew down the deer netting we’d put across the end of the round bale stacks. I propped it back up and retied some of the props. It’s a good thing Andrea and kids weren’t travelling in this weather. We were glad they made the trip to Oregon the weekend before.
That evening a celebration for Dani’s 18th birthday was held at a local restaurant. She and Roger have been living together since early summer, and are expecting a baby in late April. They are renting a little house in town and Roger started working for the local tire centre.
Dani and Roger came out yesterday and helped me put deer netting around the big square bales in the stack yard, then we put duct tape over the broken window at the front of our old stock trailer so wind and snow won’t blow in when we haul a bull home from a sale in Three Forks, Montana.
Today Andrea brought the solidified concrete packages (left over from putting a cement floor in the meat room three years ago). We placed them along the bull’s feed manger to cover the rock base we put there. The solidified packages built it up to better height, and might keep it from becoming deep mud.
November 16
It snowed on and off with a strong wind all day Tuesday. Colder weather was predicted, so Lynn and I plugged in an extension cord in the calving barn and ran it under the wall and across the second day pens to the tank heater for the weaned heifers to keep their water from freezing.
Andrea was sick with a bad head cold and ear infection, but gathered up the piles of step-in posts she left along the ditch bank. She wanted to get them before they snowed under and hard to locate.
Lynn got the pellet stove working, so we can run it at night and keep the wood stove going during the day.
Weather continues cold. Friday I dug a better channel for the spring that comes through the corner of the bull pen, cleaning out leaves, sticks, etc. so it will flow faster, and digging a deeper channel where it goes through that corner. Flowing faster through a narrow but deeper channel, that part is staying open. Hopefully, Lynn won’t have to break ice when he does chores for me while Andrea and I go to the bull sale.
The bred heifers in the pasture above the house aren’t drinking as much water these cold days and they let the water freeze in their water trough. I chopped holes in the two-inch thick ice so they could drink it down, and was then able to break up all that ice and shovel it out of the trough.
Charlie came out on Sunday to help us. He put more transmission fluid in our old feed truck, then helped us get a load of small bales from the stack yard. We stacked the coarser hay by the bull pen for bedding, and the rest by the feed manger to replenish that supply. I spread a bale of coarse hay in the shelter corner, and we put up more windbreak since it will be for two bulls.
Andrea and Charlie hauled scrap tin down from her house and created a roof over that corner, screwing tin onto long boards across the two fences that come together there. To be ready for winter, we also put the blade on the tractor and chains on the tires.
Today we’re getting last-minute things done before we go to Montana to the sale.
