New Blog

Jessi here. As you've noticed, this blog is pretty dead, and it will likely stay that way. However, I have started my own blog for writing related things, and I'm trying to update it weekly. This week, I decided to do an update about the ranch on my blog.
Non-writing Update

Summer 2013

Well, we've had quite a summer. It was really dry until mid-May then the weather changed. We got 8 inches of rain in 12 days and then a few more inches in June. It made for a lot of grass and hay. We finished haying for the year today with 2,601 bales this year. Here is a wall of pictures with captions.

A thunderhead forming as we were getting ready to go to branding.

Our smaller branding.

Most of the crew.

Riding at a branding.

Outlaw.

Moving cattle.

The grass was unbelievable.

Haying.

A picture of the mountain.

There was some pretty amazing dry-land hay.

Tractor hooked up and ready to go.

Looking across the hayfield at the house.

DJ

August 13th Storm

First of all, sorry I've been neglecting this blog. I'll try to better in the future and I will be doing a mega-post soon with the various things we have done this summer.  This post however is about the storm that came through a few days ago. The storm didn't have much hail or lightning, but it sure had the wind and the rain. It lasted for 30 minutes and in that time 2.4 inches fell in the rain gauge. I say that because with all the wind, I'm not sure how much we actually got. Dad had gone to the river to get a load of hay with the truck and got a flat tire on the front of the truck. He was about five mile from our house, but he didn't get any rain down there. We had to hurry down and get him before the creek came up though. That shows just how isolated this storm was. 

The storm rolling in.

It was raining the hardest I have ever seen.

Right after it quit raining.

These were taken at least an hour after it quit raining.

The day after the storm came through, Danny and I went out to fix the fences in the creeks and found this. There was trash piled up in what was left of the fence. It took us most of the afternoon to fix it.




















DJ

Wet and Muddy

Well in my last post there was still snow on the ground, so I guess I should give an update. Calving has been going well for us and we have been going to a few brandings. After that last snow, the moisture turned off. We didn't get anything until a couple weeks ago. But when it turned back on, it really turned on. In the past two weeks we have gotten eight inches. Four inches in the last 36 hours. It is really wet and green now.

These pictures were taken before the last rain.


Gathering cattle at a branding.

DJ

Update

I thought I better give an update since my last post was in early March. We've had quite a bit of snow since then. It normally melts off before we get more though. The temperatures have been below normal recently. About a week ago, we had a snowstorm drop about a foot of snow. 

Here is a picture of Blue Mountain covered in snow.

We have just started calving as well. When we were flying one day, we saw that a new-born calf had slid into a draw with really steep sides and couldn't get out. So, Dad landed and after a bunch of slipping and sliding, we reunited the calf with it's mother. 

The snow was still pretty deep then. 

Today was pretty windy, so we rode to check the heifers instead of flying. As you can see in this picture, the snow is melting off pretty good. It is really wet though. Once it warms up, the grass will really take off.

DJ