April 26
This past week has been cold and windy. The creek is still very low. None of the high snow is melting yet and it may be days before we get more flow in the creek for irrigating.
On Thursday, Jim drove to Missoula to pick up his twin sister, Melanie, who flew from New York. She is spending a few days here to celebrate their mutual birthday on Saturday.
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Before we fed cows Friday morning, I noticed that Pandemonium, one of our first-calf heifers, was sucking Sweet Pea, one of the other first calvers. Sweet Pea barely has enough milk for her calf, without this big robber stealing some. Pandemonium was the heifer that spent last summer in the corral after we caught her stealing milk from a young cow. We thought she’d outgrown that bad habit, but apparently, she didn’t.
Andrea and I brought Pandemonium and her calf, Panther, into the corral below the barn. She was furious and upset at being separated from the herd, even though she had the yearling heifers through the fence for company. She paced and bawled. She’ll have to live this summer apart from the herd while she raises her calf, and then we will sell her or eat her.
On Saturday evening we were supposed to go to dinner at Andrea’s house for Jim and Melanie’s birthday, but when I did chores, I discovered the hot wire was shorting out by the upper calf houses. I got that fixed. Then, when I fed Sprout and Shiloh, I saw that the heifers had stretched their hot wire and one animal was out.
Fortunately, she hadn’t gone far and none of the others were out yet so I called the rest of them into the lane by the barn and fed them a little hay to keep them there. Then I took down the hot wire where the heifer got out, herded her back over it, and locked her in the lane with her buddies.
That gave me a chance to turn off that section and get it fixed. I reinforced the “fence” with another strand of hot wire (three strands instead of two) and made sure it was all working before I let them out again. By that time, Lynn and I had to hurry to Andrea’s house for dinner.
The next day, Andrea and I loaded a round bale feeder onto the truck and took it around to Breezy’s old pen. Lynn brought a round bale with the tractor. Then we put Pandemonium and her calf in their new home.
That afternoon Dani and Roger cleaned out the calving barn and hauled the old bedding up to the field and put some of it in the heifer pen. Now the barn is clean for next year’s calving season.
Today Andrea harrowed the field above the house where the cows are. She hopes to start water on the field above that pasture as soon as there’s enough water in the creek and needed to harrow the pasture first.
May 3
Today it started raining about 6 a.m. and rained hard for several hours. It’s the most rain we’ve had all spring. Water was running down our driveway and pouring off the roof. This will be a good irrigation for all our fields. The mud was deep and slippery when we fed the cows, making it tricky to drive past my hayshed and into the pasture, but we didn’t get stuck.
May 10
The water crisis is over. With rain, snow and warmer weather, the creek is up, so everyone is trying to get as much water going as possible on their fields. Our high water may not last long this year, with less snow than normal in the mountains, so we want to grow as much grass and hay as we can before we run out.
Yesterday was a little warmer and Christopher went around with me to do evening chores and had fun petting the cats. Today he helped feed cows but it was colder and he was bundled up to walk through the cows with Andrea and Roger and me to check on the calves. He really likes seeing the calves.
