Don is the third generation of his family in that region and says holistic management has made a big difference in his success as a farmer. He took his first course with Allan Savory at Bismarck, N.D.

“That was a life-changing event. I came back to the ranch and tried to do some of the things he talked about, but it was very intense — five and a half days of lecturing — and you don’t retain 100 per cent.”

Since then, Don has taken two more courses and has helped Ralph Corcoran (a certified educator from Saskatchewan) present a course.

“The last course I took was in our local area, to meet with like-minded people who understood what I was doing and have someone to bounce ideas off and get feedback,” Don says. “We formed a club, and for about 15 years met once a month.”

His parents were supportive of what he was trying to do, even though they didn’t always understand it. After his father passed away, his mother said he’d told her, “I don’t have a clue what he’s doing, but he seems to be making headway.”

Change can be hard if a person has always done things a certain way, but holistic management enabled Don to improve his pastures and run more cattle. He was one of the first ranchers in his area to start bale grazing and winter cows out on pasture.

“I worried that somebody would report me for cruelty to animals because they didn’t know what I was doing, but now some of the guys in our neighbourhood who probably thought I was off my rocker back then are feeding their cows out on the land and achieving some of the same goals.”

Boosting yield

The Guilfords’ approach allows them to put nutrients back on the land and improve the soil. Don puts bales very close together on a piece of ground he wants to improve, so it gets covered with litter and manure. The bales are only 25 to 30 feet apart, which gives an even covering. On one piece he had 750 bales on 15 acres, completely covering it.

Rejean Picard, from Manitoba Agriculture, did soil sampling at the site before and after the bales were put there.

“One year later, we’d increased our yield on that field by 10-fold. Plus, we haul hay straight from the hayfield in July — to where we plan to bale graze — so we only handle the hay once.”

This practice reduces the cost of harvest and winter feeding. Don and his wife could move electric fences and feed 200 cows in 20 minutes, for one week.

READ MORE: Lessons in cow economics learned in the field

“We experimented on how often to let the cattle into a new batch of bales. We tried three days, a week, two weeks, and a month,” Don says. “Even letting them have an area for a month, from what the cows would normally eat in a bale feeder in the corral, we wasted the equivalent of only one or two bales and didn’t use any diesel fuel for feeding.”

The approach has saved money and created more productive ground. In doing so, they have increased the number of cows per quarter.

“Ten more cows is a 33 per cent increase in number, plus adding the length of grazing has given us about twice the amount of grazing, on the same land. This makes the land more profitable. If I wasn’t doing this, I’d be looking for more land or spending money for more hay.”

Importance of budgeting

Don and Diane have continued with holistic management, not only because it has improved their land but also because this method of record-keeping enables them to know if they are making headway or going backward.

The cattle business, of course, isn’t easy. Many Canadian ranchers faced a tough time getting through the BSE crisis. “Bankers were watching us carefully. We’d done our holistic budgets and plans for the year, and the bank was making life difficult for us,” Don recalls. “At that time we had 300 cows and in 2003 the market was so terrible (due to BSE) that we kept all our heifers.”

The next two years were no better, so they kept them all again, and got to the point where they bred 605 cows.

“We were stretching our pasture resources and buying hay,” Don says.

“At that point we quit the Royal Bank and went to the credit union to see if they were interested in doing our loan. They had us fill out a line of credit and I asked if they wanted to see our bookkeeping.”

Don showed them the ranch’s numbers, including operating needs for each month of the year — something the credit manager said they were the first to do. The lender wanted clients who knew their operation well enough to predict what they were going to make and what it would cost. Holistic management can help guide people through the tough times, and in the good times create a higher level of profit.

This budgeting gave Don more confidence. “You think you can make it, but you aren’t sure. Once you do a budget you know you can make it. You might not make much profit, but you know you are in the black. When I got a semi-load of feed that cost 10 grand, I was comfortable writing the cheque because I knew I could pay for it,” he says.

“Holistic management has made a huge difference in our lives, helping us get through BSE and other challenges. After a 15-year grind we came out on the other side with more cows than we went into it. I told my banker the only way we both would come out ahead was if I had inventory when prices recover. We lived on a tight budget, but doubled our cow herd during BSE when many people were selling cows at low prices. When prices came back, we sold cows for $2,700 that the bank valued at $800.”

Many people sold cows to try to retain the same amount of gross income and got farther behind, but Don and Diane were keeping replacements, doubling their stocking rates with bale grazing, and making progress. In 2006, though, they decided they had to sell some cows.

“We were running out of pasture, and dry-lotted 100 cows on 50 acres all summer,” Don says. “It was hard on the land, but the cows did well; we fed raw screenings and straw along with the pasture… We sold those cows in Swift Current, and they did well, on very cheap feed.”

Looking ahead

The long-term effect of holistic management has greatly improved the farm. The 1,200 acres will easily handle 250 cows and 50 replacement heifers, and still have hay ground. “This is our goal if our grandson comes back to ranch,” Don says.

A person spends a lifetime building a place and good cattle and hopes family will carry on, he says. “You have to enjoy it, however. We would never have made it through BSE if we didn’t like what we were doing. At my age (74), people ask why I don’t quit, and I tell them I like what I’m doing and it gives me a reason to get up in the morning.

“If our grandson comes back, Diane and I can keep doing it longer.”

Their grandson is currently working toward a diploma in agriculture and hopes to come back full-time.

“I’d like for him and me and Diane, and maybe his mother, to take a week-long course in holistic management. The value in that is we all sit down together and set personal goals and ranch goals — what we want to be and do — along with financial plans. It’s important to all be on the same page in terms of our expectations.”

The post Redefining a ranch appeared first on Grainews.

To avoid having any more calves drown, my husband and I fenced off the creek in those pastures. The cattle drink from water troughs instead.

In the pasture where we always have cows with young calves, they generally have access to two troughs, filled twice daily with a hose while I am doing morning and evening chores.

One of those troughs is short enough that the calves can reach the water to get a drink, but over the years that trough developed some rusted-through holes in the bottom. We fixed it once by putting mesh over the worst holes and spraying a sealant over the entire bottom. That lasted about 10 years, but then the trough started developing holes again — which at first I was able to patch with a little mud.

This spring the holes were getting big again and we planned to clean up the bottom of the trough and re-spray sealant over the bottom — which would be a lot cheaper than buying a new trough.

The problem was cold weather; we needed some warm days for the sealant to set up.

While waiting for warm enough weather to patch the trough, we made a temporary calf watering creep next to the fence, near the big water trough for the cows.

READ MORE: Water systems for cattle operations

There was already an electric wire along the top of the fence, since one of our horse pens is next to that field; we have electric fence along the top rail of all our horse pens to keep them from chewing the fences.

So it was a simple solution, to set some short tubs along the fence. They can be easily filled with water when I am watering the cows. I used an electric wire and step-in posts to keep the cows away from the tubs. Otherwise, the cows like to drink from the tubs, rub on them, and tip them over.

This has been working nicely. The calves are curious and come check out the tubs and sample the water — and soon learn to drink from the tubs — and the cows respect the hot wire and can’t get close enough to the tubs to mess them up. The wire is high enough that the calves can easily walk under, while the cows stay out of that area. Now the calves have plenty of water until we get a chance to fix the old leaky trough.

The post Creating calf creep water tubs appeared first on Grainews.

Most cow-calf producers “are too dependent on outside inputs, which are also at record-high costs,” says Pharo, who operates Pharo Cattle Company in Colorado and was the keynote speaker at the recent Holistic Herd Management Conference at Valleyview, Alta.

Pharo says there’s a wide range of profitability among ranchers in Canada.

Due to continual selection for bigger weaning weights, average cow size has increased 40 percent. Stocking rates have decreased; the same land can’t support as many cows because they consume more forage than the smaller cows of 50 years ago. Cost of production has increased, and profits have decreased.

READ MORE: Rethinking ranch priorities

“If everyone was making money like they were in 2014-2015, I wouldn’t worry, but they are not making that much money now, even with higher cattle prices, because expenses have risen. People need to make major changes regarding how they operate.”

Pharo promotes profit per acre, not overall production of meat, as the route to profitability.

For that, he uses a “two trucks” illustration. Take two ranches of equal size. One produces 50,000 pounds of 400-pound calves (more total calves). The other ranch produces 50,000 pounds of 600-pound calves (fewer animals).

“Fifty thousand pounds of calves is a truckload,” he says.

Using recent market prices for calves, the 400-pound calves on the blue truck are worth $42,000 more than the 600-pound calves on the red truck. It follows that the lighter calves are worth more per pound.

“For over 50 years, the average cow-calf producers have been breeding and selecting for the wrong thing,” says Pharo, “Their ‘bragging rights’ (weaning bigger calves than the neighbours) may have increased, but at the expense of their profits.”

With proper grass management — using rotational grazing and regenerative practices to improve soil health and grass production — and the right kind of low-maintenance genetics, many cow-calf producers today have more than doubled the amount of beef they produce per acre.

“This is happening in many environments, on four different continents,” Pharo said.

Consider the two ranches represented by the two trucks. One ranch continues to focus on increasing pounds per cow (weaning weights). The other ranch is focused on doubling pounds per acre through a combination of low-maintenance genetics and proper grass management. The income difference is significant.

“The ranch represented by the two blue trucks (with double the original stocking rate) is grossing $215,500 more than the ranch represented by the red truck. This is why some cow-calf producers are extremely profitable, while most cow-calf producers are struggling to make a decent living. Many ranches that were put together and paid for with 350-pound calves are now struggling and going broke with 600-pound calves.”

The beef industry, he says, has been based on what fundamentals were like 50 years ago, when land, feed, fuel, labour and equipment were cheap.

“We need to learn how to operate differently than we did 50 years ago. What worked so well back then will never work again,” he says.

Expenses a challenge

Pharo mentions the need for increasing production, but also the fact that ranchers need to eliminate some expenses.

Otherwise, he says, they might as well sell their cattle and land at the top of the market and do something different because it’s only going to get worse; expenses will keep going up.

There are ways to eliminate and reduce some expenses, such as calving in sync with nature — that is, when cows can be on grass rather than fed hay, with less labour and facilities required for cold-weather calving.

“For Canadians, that will save more than $100 per cow, which equates to $100 more profit per cow.”

Producers should learn how to graze more and feed less, Pharo says.

Those big cows require a lot more feed and aren’t producing as many pounds of calf compared to their own body weight as smaller, more efficient cows.

“For 50 years we’ve been trying to get bigger weaning weights, and succeeded, but cows are 40 per cent bigger, too.”

Increasing production per cow did not work, so we need to increase production per acre. Many folks at the holistic conference are already producing twice as much beef per acre as their neighbours and doing it long enough that they know it works, Pharo said.

“Ranchers in many regions have doubled or even tripled production simply by having the right kind of cows and knowing how to manage grass. If you can go from 50,000 pounds of calves to 100,000 pounds of calves on the same ranch, that’s huge.”

Change can be difficult for ranchers who have been doing things a certain way for a long time. “The older we get, the less we want to change; we don’t like risk. When we were 30 years old, risk was not such a big deal, but when you are 60 or 70 years old risk becomes a big deal.”

In a multigenerational ranch, trying to convince Dad or Grandpa there should be some changes can be hard.

But cow numbers across the U.S. and Canada are lower than they’ve been for 72 years, so the industry can’t afford more ranches going out of business.

Anyone interested in the Pharo Cattle Company program can receive weekly e-mail newsletters to learn more.

The post A key to cattle business survival appeared first on Grainews.

Over that time, he’s found certain legumes can bring net benefits to pastures and forage stands — significant enough to outweigh the potential drawbacks.

Eleven years ago, he recalls now, “we started working with a new sainfoin variety, and also asked a number of producers grazing higher-legume pastures to work with (Alberta’s provincial) Agri-Profit$ program and keep their beef and pasture financial records.”

During that time Alberta provincial production economists Dale Kaliel, and later Anatoliy Oginskyy, had been analyzing Alberta cow-calf operations through Agri-Profit$. That analysis involved recording pasture productivity data as benchmarks.

“For three years Dale added these additional higher-legume grazing producers into the total data pool,” Lastiwka says, and the department worked with applied research and forage associations in seeding sainfoin-alfalfa mixtures in small plot trials.

“After three years of data collection from these plots and producer data from regular- and higher-legume mix pastures, we saw that most higher-legume grass pastures were significantly more productive and profitable than grass pastures,” Lastiwka says now.

Several local producers in those associations wanted in on the next step of the research, he says, leading to 12 sites of about 10 acres each in Alberta and one in B.C. with the Peace River Forage Association, seeded with a mixture of sainfoin, alfalfa and grasses.

To “feed the grazing system,” so to speak, it’s important to have a legume in a pasture, Lastiwka says. “It improves the animal/plant nutrient cycling, forage quality, animal performance and grazing stability later into the season.”

With that in mind, the specialists began to look at new sainfoin cultivars and those varieties’ ability to regrow, compared with alfalfa.

“Since sainfoin can set seed so easily, it has the ability to create a soil seed bank; there is opportunity for regeneration from seed,” he says. “If a producer lets the plants go to seed now and then, there’s less need to reseed a pasture. This can work with many legumes, though alfalfa is harder to do this with.”

In earlier studies tied to the Year Round Grazing project (2006), Lastiwka and colleagues had found the productivity of Alberta’s perennial pastures to be disappointing. “We decided that the next stage would be looking at improving pastures with legumes.”

‘Made sense’

That said, the practice of rotational managed grazing had already been picking up support and adoption since the early ’80s, starting with advice from Allan Savory’s Holistic Resource Management, Stan Parsons’ Ranching for Profit, and producer-driven forage associations.

Thus, in Alberta, “there was a strong following for rest and recovery,” Lastiwka says.

“My brother (Benny) and I in 1987 divided hayfields (containing a lot of alfalfa) and started grazing them. We saw a 99-pound increase in our calf weights due to the higher legume content of the forage and better management of the forage growth.”

In other words, “it made sense to include more legumes in pastures,” he says.

The sainfoin project, he says, came about because Gordon Hutton, an Alberta Agriculture forage and business specialist at the time, “came to me after he’d been given a directive to do a business project on forages, and wondered what we should focus on.”

Lastiwka said he thought the project should focus on sainfoin — “because we needed to showcase the Canadian forage breeding programs which were not well supported.”

READ MORE: Going beyond grass: The case for forage legumes

Those breeding programs had developed several improved and non-bloating cultivars of legumes, such as Oxley II and AC Veldt cicer milkvetch, AC Bruce birdsfoot trefoil and AAC Mountainview and AAC Glenview sainfoin.

“The biggest reason people don’t include legumes in pastures is fear of bloat. This is something we needed to overcome,” Lastiwka says. Thus, “we jumped on the bandwagon to study sainfoin in our higher-legume pastures project.”

For the project, dubbed ‘Retrofitting Existing Pastures with Canadian-Bred Non-Bloating Legumes,’ the last phase was sod seeding, he recalls.

“If someone asked about putting some alfalfa in there, I told them to go ahead — because management is a key part of whether bloat is a problem or not. If you have a mix of grasses and legumes — some non-bloating legumes along with the bloating legumes — the dilution effect, allowing for more maturity and good management, can prevent bloat,” he says.

Anyone participating in the project could pick what they wanted to plant, he adds. “We were pushing for sainfoin to be included, along with cicer milkvetch, birdsfoot trefoil et cetera, but bloat-potential legumes like red clover, alsike clover, purple or yellow-blossom alfalfa were also encouraged.”

The benefits of sainfoin will always be complicated, however, by its seed size — almost seven times larger than alfalfa seed — which makes it a difficult sell for producers to include in their pasture mixes.

“It has only about 30,000 seeds per pound versus 200,000 seeds per pound with alfalfa. When buying seed and wanting sainfoin to be a large part of a total mix, most producers balk at paying that much money,” Lastiwka says.

Crop producers have been well covered for financial loss, given recent high grain prices and the availability of good crop insurance — but cattle prices have not been high until lately.

As a result, “forage acres have more risk. The total acres of forage in Canada have dropped dramatically and beef cattle numbers are falling.”

Into that context — as well as an ongoing drought — the federal government set up the OFCAF (On-Farm Climate Action Fund), Lastiwka says.

OFCAF is meant to support farmers in adopting beneficial management practices that store carbon and reduce greenhouse gases — specifically in areas such as nitrogen management, cover cropping, rotational grazing and higher-legume forage stands — while providing other environmental benefits such as improved biodiversity and soil health.

Last year, along came the federal/provincial Resilient Agriculture Landscape Program, Lastiwka adds.

“Now producers have funding for adding more legumes to pastures — 51 per cent legumes in pastures. The struggle last year, however, was drought, but we are again slowly making progress,” he says.

‘Growing like crazy’

All this amounts to opportunity — namely, the opportunity to get a message across about the benefits of higher levels of legumes in a pasture mix.

“A challenge is still which legumes are best for your own land, grazing plans, and management situation, and cost of seed,” Lastiwka says. “Because of the large size of sainfoin seed, it continues to be used at low rates in legume mixtures and many people don’t try to purchase improved varieties.”

The seed industry puts the percentage of total seed weight of each component of a mix on a bag label. Thus, “if the label says 50 per cent sainfoin, because of large seed size, this translates in sainfoin to only about 20 per cent of a stand in the field,” he says.

“For the highest productivity in moderately dry to moister areas, we can graze pastures quickly in the spring or early summer, taking about a quarter to a third of it, because they are growing like crazy. Then we can come back again for a second or maybe even a third graze in moister climates, after it has had a chance to adequately regrow.

“At our farm, with my second grazing in September or later, most legumes have some seed set. I graze that second pass hard. The grazing activity of cattle, consuming and defecating viable seed, can spread legume seeds (or trample them into the soil) as another planting.”

Seeds of several legumes can also be fed to cattle by mixing the seed into their mineral. “This is a low-cost seeding method for adding legumes to grass pastures. I have used this mix and find that after the manure starts to break down, sainfoin and other legume seedlings emerge from the manure,” Lastiwka says.

Sainfoin can be included in a lot of stands, but many producers don’t yet know enough about it. “Some don’t want to gamble and take the risks, since it is expensive, but with support from these recent programs, I hope more people will be willing to try it, and manage for its success.”

‘Paid to plant’

Lastiwka still has sainfoin in his own older stand, though he acknowledges he didn’t plant the best variety. “I seeded our project a year before some of the newly selected sainfoin varieties were available.”

Given that the uptake of new varieties is based on projections of how much a company can sell, will enough people buy it to cover the cost of producing it?

“Trying to meet those needs, economically and competitively, makes a difference in how many new Canadian forage varieties are available for producers. Now should be a time we could utilize a lot of sainfoin, with the new government programs, because people will be paid to plant high-legume pastures as long as they are over 50 per cent legumes,” Lastiwka says.

Lastiwka’s own pasture, planted in 2011, still has 50 per cent legume — and different kinds, at that. “The low land is bird’s foot trefoil and alsike clover plus grasses. Much of the upper land is yellow-blossom alfalfa, cicer milkvetch and grasses. My less-suitable sainfoin variety is only present in small amounts.”

Sainfoin breeding by Dr. Hari Poudel at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada in Lethbridge remains ongoing, Lastiwka notes. Breeding of cicer milkvetch and alfalfas and grasses continues at the University of Saskatchewan, as does work with clovers and birdsfoot trefoil and hardier alfalfas in Nova Scotia and Quebec.

“Since there is still Canadian legume breeding going on, we need to keep making an effort to get newly released varieties into the right hands for producer use.”

The post Pastures, hayland get a leg up with legumes appeared first on Grainews.

I first became aware of Grainews nearly 50 years ago when the first editor-publisher John Clark contacted me after he saw one of my articles in another publication and wanted to reprint it.

After that, I started sending him a few articles on topics such as calf scours and horse care, and a few personal experiences with unusual situations — like saving a newborn calf with a broken lower jaw.

That calf belonged to a friend whose cow had stepped on it and he gave the calf to us because he didn’t want to deal with it. My husband Lynn, the kids and I went to get the calf. We brought him home in our old 1957 Volkswagen, with the kids holding onto him in the back seat.

We taped the broken jaw into place and fed the calf with a nasogastric tube (into the nostril and down the throat) for three weeks while the jawbone healed.

At that time, I was a young ranch wife with two small children. My husband Lynn and I were struggling to make ends meet, to pay for our ranch and cattle. He did part-time jobs for other ranchers. I did my “off-farm job” at home, writing stories and articles for horse and livestock publications on an old LC Smith typewriter at odd hours between taking care of kids and cows.

Cattle and horses were my passion from the time I was a small child. My goal in life was to learn as much as I could about them and their care and to share that knowledge with others. It was fun to sometimes add a bit of humour along the way.

After a couple of years purchasing a few of my stories and articles, the editor at Grainews asked if I would write a regular column about daily life on our ranch. He suggested I obtain a small camera to take around with me while doing chores, riding range, etc. which I did, to illustrate my columns. For many years I mailed my typewritten columns and printed photos, and then in 1985 I finally got a computer and was able to send my material by email. I am grateful for the multiple editors I worked with over the years, who published my articles and column in Cattleman’s Corner and especially enjoyed the friendship with Lee Hart — the most recent editor — who came to visit us here at the ranch a few years ago.

My Rancher’s Diary spanned several decades and chronicled the life of our family as our kids grew up and helped us take care of cattle and horses through all the challenges and fun times. When we had unusual situations or interesting adventures, I shared those, too — for example, the premature calf that lived in our kitchen for four weeks, in our daughter Andrea’s old crib, until he was able to live outside. Or the cow that got her foot caught in a cattle guard and tore the hoof shell off; we kept bandaging it until she grew new hoof horn. She and her calf lived in our backyard that summer.

Our kids were good help. They both started riding range with me at a young age on my old mare Khamette, the first horse I ever raised, who became a very dependable kid horse.

Michael helped Lynn irrigate and do the haying, and Andrea started riding the range by herself early on, training her young horse. Our family made a great team on the ranch and our lives were closely entwined with those of the animals in our care.

Readers of my diary column sometimes called — to ask advice on various things they were dealing with on their own places with their own cattle, or to tell us how they solved a certain problem, or just to visit because they identified with what we were doing.

We had pleasant surprises when people stopped by our ranch to visit. We met a lot of wonderful folks who went out of their way to come to our place when they were travelling. The result was many lifelong friends we still correspond with, and some have come to visit multiple times.

When we nearly lost our daughter in the summer of 2000 — she spent much of that summer in the ICU at the Intermountain Burn Center in Salt Lake City, after being badly burned while trying to help control a range fire — we were amazed and blessed by an outpouring of love and care from many Grainews readers, some of whom were burn survivors themselves or had family members who were burn victims.

It’s been a great experience, sharing our lives with other farm and ranch families. Over the years, you have all become like a big extended family. Even though I will no longer be writing the column, I am grateful for the chance to have had this interaction. We have appreciated the phone calls and visits from folks who have gotten to know us and shared our journey. See you around sometime, out on the range!

The post It’s been a wonderful visit appeared first on Grainews.

Last week we moved the cows to the lower back field to join the heifers They can all graze there a few weeks. We checked the temporary fence around the deep gully — to make sure it was still secure enough to keep cows out of that gully. It’s so deep and narrow that if a cow fell into it she would never get out. Hopefully we can get a truckload of rocks hauled across the field this winter when the ground is frozen, to dump at the base of the hill so Michael can fill that chasm with his mini excavator.

Andrea spent several days preparing food for the celebration of life for baby Ammarie, which was held at the Sacajawea Center Oct. 14 — the day she would have been six months old. Samantha took time off from work and classes in Twin Falls and was here a few days. Many friends helped; some brought food and Emily helped Dani prepare the slide show. David and Rosina Yoder and kids (our Amish neighbours up the creek) sang hymns and David gave the opening prayer. Andrea and I told about our special memories of that baby girl, and Dani read the life story she’d written. My brother gave the closing prayer, then dinner and visiting. The hall was packed with people who came to support Dani in this time of loss and grief and to honour the memory of a child whose life was abruptly snuffed in a tragic way.

On Monday Andrea and Lynn drove to Tower Creek to locate water for folks who need a well. That afternoon the old crab-apple tree above my hay shed split and half of it broke off and fell down. That tree is the last of four that were here when we moved onto the place in 1967; they were planted in the late 1800s. That 130-year-old tree was loaded with apples and limbs were sagging low. We thought a bear might have been in it, causing it to finally crack and break.

Yesterday Andrea and Lynn drove to Dillon, Montana, to locate water for two wells. Coming home after dark, two deer bounded across the road in front of them. The buck — chasing a doe — smashed into the front of the pickup, broke the grill, dented the hood and fender, but didn’t damage the headlights, so they were able to drive home.

October 29

Last Saturday Andrea and Lynn went to Kirtley Creek to locate another water source for a well. That evening we had Nick here for supper, and Andrea and Christopher joined us.

The next day Jim sawed up the fallen-down portion of the old crab apple tree and hauled off everything except some of the useable wood. Nick filled his water barrels at our hydrant. While he was here he swept out leaves that collected in the valley of our roof, and used a flashlight to look down the chimney to see if it needed to be cleaned. It’s still good, from when he cleaned it last winter.

Andrea and I are trying to select the bulls we might bid on in the Pharo Cattle Company sale in Montana, checking information on them and their videos that were taken this summer. We need a list of at least 20 we’d bid on; there will be high demand for the ones with guaranteed calving ease, good dispositions, mothers with good udders, and other traits.

Tuesday Lynn had for his appointment at the clinic for an echocardiogram on his heart. He’s still doing pretty well but needs another checkup later.

Our weather changed — colder and snowing. Andrea and I strung out an extension cord from the barn and plugged in the tank heater for the heifers’ water. She checked all our ditches again to make sure they are securely shut off at the creek so we won’t get ice flows across our fields.

November 6

We checked the cows and they were still doing OK and grazing through the snow. The weather moderated this week and they continued to graze.

Lynn took our pickup to the auto shop to be fixed; insurance will pay for damage from the deer running into the front end. We bought parts for new brakes, and Charlie will do that job for us.

The past few days have been warmer, thawing during the day, and the snow melted. We’ve been diligently working on fall projects we need to accomplish before the ground is solidly frozen.

Andrea, Dani, Emily, Christopher and Charlie went to Twin Falls for few days and stayed with Sam. Andrea went to one of Sam’s EMT classes and talked to the class about her experiences as a burn survivor. They celebrated Dani’s birthday there. Christopher got to see a real train. He loves making tracks for his toy trains but had never seen a real one.

While they were gone I worked on several projects, putting tin and dirt along the outer wall of our bathroom where there’s still an air leak that tends to freeze our water pipes. I spent a few hours on a couple days shoveling sod out of the ditch that goes by the calving barn (so it can carry more water in spring runoff and won’t flood the barn) and put the sod and dirt in low spots along the front of the barn. Snow coming off the barn roof piles up in front of the barn, and if snow is deep in the pen by the barn, water runs into the barn when it melts. Having a berm in front will deflect that runoff.

Andrea got home from Twin Falls last night and today helped me move the cows from the lower backfield. They came running and followed her four-wheeler through the barnyard past the bull corrals and up to the swamp pasture and big field by her house. If that feed doesn’t snow under, it should last about 45 days before we have to feed hay.

We took off Dottie’s shoes this afternoon and trimmed her feet.

November 14

While weather was still nice, we took off Willow’s shoes, trimmed her feet, and trimmed Ed’s feet. Andrea took down the fence we put around the gully chasm on the hill above the lower backfield two years ago, so we can hopefully fill in the gully this winter. She got all the step-in posts out easily, and most of the steel posts, and rolled up the wire and netting. Some of the steel posts were difficult to pull by hand; she borrowed Michael’s post puller for those.

Lynn was able to start the big tractor one afternoon while it was warm and we didn’t have to plug it in. He put power service in it for winter, and brought it around to the shop and air compressor to inflate a low tire — then parked it closer to the barn so we can plug it in on cold winter mornings when we’re feeding hay.

Andrea put a hot wire around her house and yard, but lets the cows in there for a few hours every morning (while she’s around to supervise and make sure they don’t rub on vehicles or damage anything) to clean up weeds and tall grass before winter. Saturday morning when I did chores I discovered two of the neighbour’s horses had been here all night, roaming around our barnyard, fighting with our horses over the fence, eating on the haystacks by Shiloh, going up past the bull pen, wandering down to the lower back field, etc. I saw them coming back up the lane from that field and shut some gates, opened the gate into the main corral, then hurried down through the little bulls’ pen to get below them before they could run down to the lower field. I was able to herd them into the corral so they could be collected.

I thought that episode would be the end of it, but next morning, they were back again, and brought a buddy. There were three of them eating on our alfalfa bales. From the looks of the big holes they ate out of multiple bales (on all three stacks) and numerous poop piles, they’d been eating there all night! We’ll have to leave our driveway gate shut (an inconvenience for all the people who drive in and out to get to Andrea’s house as well as ours) but it will keep roaming livestock out.

Sunday morning Andrea helped me fix the makeshift feeder in the main corral — that we created last winter for the big bulls when the bull corral was being rebuilt. We’d tied poles up with twines, and it worked, but we want it to be a permanent feeder. She used her chain saw to cut off the extra length of one pole and we screwed them to the fence. The bull we buy will live in that corral so we wanted the feeder improved.

Today we’re making our final list on the bulls we might bid on at the sale.

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Last winter, we created a new little pasture by clearing out the trees and willow bushes, then piling and burning them in hopes of growing more grass. We grazed that new pasture twice this summer with our yearling heifers, and it served as one more paddock in our rotation system.

However, the willows have been coming back in again prolifically, sending up shoots all over the pasture. The heifers ate them back a little since they like to browse on the leaves, but at the rate the new shoots are regrowing, we fear we’ll lose all the cleared ground we’d gained.

We didn’t want to use spray, and hoped to set these bushes back naturally with the cattle’s browsing activity. Since our bull corrals have no brush or weeds because of the constant nibbling activity (animals in corrals being fed hay always like to eat something else in addition), we thought we’d winter the yearling bulls in the new little pasture and let them work on the willows, then take them out again in early spring before the grass starts to grow.

They still need hay for winter feed, so we had to figure out some kind of feeder to keep them from wasting hay fed on the ground. Since hay feeders/mangers/bunks are expensive, anywhere from several hundred dollars to more than $1,000, we decided to build one ourselves with materials at hand. We could situate it in the fence corner next to the lane, where we could easily add hay through the fence, and brace it solidly in the corner so the bulls couldn’t move it around and damage it.

My daughter Andrea and I scrounged materials from our “salvage pile” and created the feeder in a couple of hours. At first we thought we’d build it from some old boards but then realized it would be quicker and easier to utilize an old leaky aluminum water trough that hadn’t been usable for 25 years. It would be perfect for the job, since any rain or snow melt could leak out instead of pooling around the hay. To reinforce and secure it so the bulls couldn’t damage it, we situated it tightly in the fence corner against the braces, and placed an old board under the edge of the trough to keep it from being flat on the ground.

The old fence removed last winter when the new pasture was created had been a couple of feet off the new fence line, so there was an old post hole conveniently located near the end of the water trough. I cleaned out the old hole (reaching in to remove the caved-in dirt) and made it deep enough again to put in a salvaged post. After tamping it solidly, and using several old boards to brace it, the makeshift post was very secure.

Thus we could use that post to secure a pole placed tightly against the top of the water trough to reinforce it so the bulls couldn’t mash it down when leaning into the trough to eat their hay. We secured the other end of the pole to the fence brace in the opposite corner.

We also put a pole along the bottom of the water trough to make sure it wasn’t damaged and caved in by the bulls’ feet. We used a tall board to brace it and keep it from moving out from the trough. Everything was securely screwed together. It helped having a battery-powered drill for putting in all the screws! Our inexpensive feed manger was created quickly and easily, using materials salvaged from fence remodels in the past.

Now the young bulls are happily eating willows and dormant grass in that pasture, with plenty of room for exercise, and enjoying a little hay from their “new” feeder to balance their diet. If we can use this as a winter pasture or young bulls every year, we may eventually win the war on willows.

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Last Wednesday Andrea got her pickup hooked to the trailer at the loading dock, ready to go to auction, and we put hay in the trailer to create better footing for the cattle. That evening I put the steer calves and two open yearling heifers in the calving pen where they’d be easy to access the next morning, fed them good hay, and filled their water tubs. It started raining in the night; they were cold and miserable and didn’t eat or drink much.

I did chores early that next morning. Charlie helped us load the cattle and went with Andrea to haul them to Butte. It was a slow trip with wind and bad roads, but the cattle looked good when they unloaded. The weather was even colder over there, but the pens were bedded with straw.

It was a big sale the next day (almost 2,000 head) with buyers from all over — even from Canada — and prices were good. The steers brought $3.24 per pound and the two yearling heifers brought $2.32 per pound. That’s our highest price ever.

Andrea left the truck and trailer backed up to the loading chute again when they got home, and we shovelled out the wet hay. The rain and snow blew into the trailer, but the hay helped keep the rubber mats from being slippery. Charlie fixed the thermostat on Andrea’s pickup.

The neighbours rounded up most of their cattle off the range that weekend. We kept our driveway gate shut for several days to make sure none came into our place. They made their biggest drive on Saturday — it quit raining by then.

Andrea and Carolyn went up to the 320 on four-wheelers to make sure the riders didn’t push any cattle through our fences. Fortunately, our fences stayed intact and they got their cattle past our place and on down into the low range where they sorted them.

That afternoon we put new bedding hay in the trailer and Charlie came out to stay the night. He, Andrea and Nick joined us for supper. Early Sunday morning we loaded the four cull cows and Andrea and Charlie headed to Butte again. The weather was better this time — cold, but no rain or snow. The cows sold well on the regular sale on Tuesday. The big red cow (the one that tried to kill us this spring when she calved during a blizzard and we had to sled her calf into the barn) weighed 1,425 and brought $1.12 per pound. Lilligator (the three-year-old that’s just as mean and ornery) weighed 1,150 and brought $1.27 per pound. Those two cows we didn’t put with a bull this summer because we planned to sell them. The two younger cows that were open (first-calvers) were a little smaller and brought $1.35 per pound.

The weather warmed up for a few days, so Andrea and I made a fast ride yesterday to check the range and see how many cows got missed on the big roundup. We didn’t see any on the low range and middle range (just two rattlesnakes and one bull elk that jumped up out of the sagebrush and spooked our horses).

We rode today on the high range — a longer ride to see how many cattle might be left there. We went up through the 320 and saw several cattle above us on the mountain toward Withington Creek. When Andrea checked with binoculars, she could tell that one of those four animals was a bull. As we rode out that gate and started up the hill to check those cattle to see whose they were, we saw a neighbour riding around the hill above us. When we started out around the mountain, we met him coming back with three of those animals, but no bull.

He went on down the hill with the three cattle and picked up a couple more to take around the mountain and into his 160-acre pasture to take down to the road. We checked Baker Creek — no cows or tracks — then back out over the mountain toward Withington Creek and found the bull he’d left. It was another neighbour’s bull left out there with no other cattle, which will make it difficult to get him home. We’ll call and tell them where he is.

October 10

The memorial celebration of life for Ammarie will be this Saturday, on the date she would have been six months old. We are all helping Dani prepare for this occasion, and many family members and friends are preparing the food.

Friday we moved the heifer calves to the pen next to Shiloh and Sprout, where there is lush regrowth of grass. They grazed that for a couple of days, then we put them in the big field below the lane. Regrowth from that hayfield and pasture should last until it snows under.

We moved the cows to heifer hill for a few days to eat that regrowth, but will move them to a new pasture this afternoon to join the seven pregnant heifers in the big back lower field. When that’s gone, we’ll move them to the field and hillside by Andrea’s house. With luck, we’ll have enough pasture until winter sets in.

Saturday Charlie came out and changed the oil and the air filter in our old feed truck, and got the window (that fell out of its track and down into the door) functional again. He stayed for supper; Andrea, Christopher and Nick joined us and we had a nice visit. It’s great to have our two grandsons nearby and able to get together! Nick came on Sunday and adjusted two of our corral gates that were sagging. The younger generation is great to have around.

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Last week we moved some big bales in our upper stack that was leaning over into the bushes toward the creek. We stacked them on the end of the smaller stack, reconfigured the black plastic covering and put deer mesh around them to keep the deer out.

Emily’s wedding was Friday — marrying her good friend AJ. Andrea and AJ’s mom and friends supplied food for the reception dinner. Sam came home from college for a few days to help with all the preparations.

Thursday we moved the cows from the field below the lane and took them up the horse road to heifer hill.

Friday morning everyone left early to drive to AJ’s dad’s place at Gibbonsville to get things set up for the wedding. Lynn and I drove to Jenelle’s ranch the other side of town and went with her; she drove our pickup so Lynn wouldn’t have to drive so far.

It was a lovely outdoor wedding. Samantha and Dani were bridesmaids, along with several of Emily’s friends. Four-year-old Christopher was part of the procession. After all the other bridesmaids walked to their places Dani led Christopher by the hand as he pulled a little wagon that contained a bubble machine spewing bubbles into the air. The bubbles were in memory of Emily’s Grandma Bubbles — the nickname she had for her dad’s mom, who died when Em was very young.

The wagon also contained flowers and a quilt with pictures of Ammarie. The original plan, before Dani’s baby died, was for Ammarie to be in that wagon in a car seat, as the flower girl, pulled by Christopher.

Many of Emily’s elderly patients at Discovery Care Center wanted to come to her wedding, so she arranged for the Discovery bus to bring them. Many people helped them get around in their wheelchairs for the wedding, and the reception dinner at the old schoolhouse afterward.

At the dinner it was heartwarming to see Emily in her wedding dress, helping those old people with their food and making sure they had everything they needed. It’s easy to see why they love her.

I’ve never been to a wedding that had so many old folks and young kids! AJ has a big family; some of his siblings, relatives and friends have little kids and they were all running around having a great time. Christopher has many new cousins to play with.

Christopher is growing up fast. He tells people that baby Ammarie is up in the stars. He likes to go outside at night and look for Ammarie. One night he told Emily, “It’s dark now; I want to go outside”. He sat on the porch and said he was looking for Ammarie — but it was overcast so Emily told him it was too cloudy right then… and he said “I’ll wait.”

At an evening barbeque for Emily and AJ and family the day after the wedding, Christopher saw some moving satellites and got excited and said Ammarie was moving around up there. He’ll probably always equate stars with that cousin he only had a brief chance to know.

Saturday, when Andrea and I checked the cows and calves on heifer hill — which we didn’t have a chance to check Friday because of the wedding — we discovered Zorina (a first-calf cow) lying in the bushes. She was dull, with moderately fast respiration, and didn’t want to get up. I had to rub on her to encourage her to get up. She was weak and took a couple of tries to get to her feet.

We located her calf (Zork) and brought him to her, and eased the pair through the gate into the next field. We slowly brought them down through that field but the calf wanted to run back to his buddies. Several times we thwarted his attempts to run back past us, but then he made a big run and got around us.

It was a weekend and we weren’t able to get a vet (the new cow vet is only in our area part time) so we gave her Banamine to reduce pain and inflammation, and a two-day dose of antibiotic. The pain relief helped; she started nibbling grass, but she also missed her calf and started pacing the fence.

We went back to heifer hill and selected a couple of pairs that would be fairly easy to handle on foot and used them as a little “herd” to bring Zork back to his mom. We left those two pairs in the pasture next to her pen, so she’d have them close by for company, and not be so stressed.

She did better the next couple of days, pooping normally and chewing her cud again, but wasn’t recovered. We called the new vet, and he came to look at her. She was definitely better than when we first treated her, because this time she was livelier and did NOT want to go in the head catch!

Dr. Abbey checked lungs and gut sounds and checked her rectally (and she was 80 days pregnant). He discovered that her rumen wasn’t functioning properly and might benefit from probiotics to get it working better, but didn’t have any with him. So he simply gave her more Banamine and antibiotics. She’s still a little dull, but eating and drinking and maybe Mother Nature and Father Time will aid her recovery.

September 13

This past week Jim has been splitting wood, preparing our piles for winter. We had a power glitch Friday evening and the phones went dead for a while and the internet went out. I had no internet service for several days and had some urgent deadlines for articles and many interviews to line up for future articles, so my brother accessed my email messages from his computer and read them to me over the phone or printed out the ones I desperately needed for interviewee’s corrections/changes to rough drafts I’d sent them. I called some editors and they gave me extensions on deadlines. Finally on Tuesday a tech person came out and spent a couple of hours working on my computer internet problem and got it going again so I’ve been madly trying to catch up with interviews and article deadlines.

September 20

It feels like fall, quite cold in the mornings. I’ll need to start draining my hoses for watering cattle and horses.

Monday morning I did chores early, then called the cows in from the field above the house and down into the calving pen. Andrea came down on her four-wheeler as I brought them through the driveway past the house to the corrals, and helped me sort the cows into one pen and calve into another. By that time Carolyn and Charlie arrived and we were ready for Dr. Abbey and his wife.

We got the cows and heifers preg-checked, dewormed and vaccinated, then put the calves through the chute to vaccinate and Bangs vaccinated the heifers. Andrea and Charlie took the calves to the orchard pasture; it has green grass more than a foot tall and should be adequate feed until we sell the steers.

Today the brand inspector is coming to look at the calves and cull cows we’ll be selling, since a brand inspection is required when cattle from one state are sold in another state. The weather is supposed to be bad Thursday, with rain and maybe snow, so Charlie will go with Andrea to haul the calves to the Montana sale. He’ll be a lot more help than us old folks if they have any trouble on the road.

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We bought some big square bales from Phil Moulton; he hauled and stacked them for us, and Dani helped us put black plastic over the bales. We always buy some hay to augment the little bales we put up on our few acres of hay ground.

Tuesday and Wednesday, Andrea and I were able to ride and make sure there were no range cows in the 320-acre pasture. We also repaired the electric wire over the driveway that our stackwagon tore down when we hauled hay from the field below the lane. Lynn used the tractor and lifted Andrea up on the hay fork (with a wood pallet over the tines to create a safer platform for her to stand on) and got her high enough to reach up the poles to reconnect the wire.

Wednesday Dani showed us her new puppy — a cute little border collie-Corgi cross — and the beautiful urn she ordered for Ammarie’s ashes.

Our first fire of the season is out of control on Hayden Creek, just over the hills from us. The past few days have been very smoky.

We moved the cows a few times into new segments of pasture, and Andrea finished putting step-in posts and hot wire around the heifer hill hayfield so we can graze the rough feed around it and let the field grow back before we graze it.

While our cattle are fine, some on range pasture are running out of feed.

Aug. 15 — We had more hot weather and were immersed in smoke the past couple of weeks. The Hayden Creek fire is out of control and burned 27,000 acres. We had several lightning storms but hardly any rain. The power went off on two different days, and when it goes off our phones don’t work, sometimes for longer than the power outage. Our phone company doesn’t have battery backups on outlying rural systems.

Nick has a nice spot for his trailer on our hill pasture. He has a generator for electricity, and several 50-gallon plastic barrels he fills with water once a week at our hydrant by Sprout’s pen for his water supply. A couple of weeks ago there was a three-foot-long rattlesnake by his trailer door. He shot it and showed us the rattles. He has now built a porch so he won’t be stepping right out of the trailer and onto another snake!

We took the cows up the horse road to heifer hill to graze the outer edges for a week, then let them down into the next circular pasture (rough edge around the hayfield). Rotating and letting those pieces regrow to graze again increases our pasture production.

Aug. 30 — Jim has been taking his trailer to the woods once or twice a week to get firewood for us and Andrea. We had more hot weather, up to 37 C. The creek is dropping and the watermaster shut off all of Michael and Carolyn’s ditches (fourth right). It’s a good thing Andrea is a good irrigator and can do a lot with a little.

Last week I called my uncle Bob Smith in Tennessee to wish him and his wife a happy anniversary. They’ve been married 71 years. He’s my dad’s youngest brother and is now 92 years old.

We moved the heifers out of the pen next to Shiloh where they’ve been grazing. Lynn put air in a low front tire on the tractor, and it was ready that afternoon when Phil brought two loads second cut-alfalfa round bales to stack there. Rain was predicted and he wanted to get it hauled before it started. Wind was blowing and rain was starting as he brought the second load that evening, but we managed to get it covered with black plastic and tied down before the rain came for real. Nick came that evening to fill his water barrels and stayed for supper.

It rained hard that night, and when Nick started down the hill next morning, the road was slippery and his truck slid sideways and almost into the gully. He had to leave it there (we had 1.5 inches of rain over three days) until the road dried enough to drive it on down. He borrowed one of his folks’ four-wheelers to go up and down the road when it’s muddy, leaving his truck at the bottom of the hill.

Sunday evening we had belated birthday celebration for Charlie (his 22nd birthday was Thursday) and pot-luck dinner at our house. Dani made a birthday cake. Monday we rearranged a few big bales in the stackyard and put deer netting and elk panels around the stacks. Andrea took out more step-in posts and rolled up the electric wires, to get our temporary fences removed before winter.

I took care of Christopher part of the day while everyone was working on these projects. He “helped” me in the house. At one point he somberly told me, “Dani’s baby gone. She’s in the stars.” We are all missing that sweet child — even her four-year-old cousin.

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