We’ve entered my favorite month. Happy October to everyone.
Category: Uncategorized
Don’t Mess with Kingbirds
Today’s Denver Post had this great pic of a Western Kingbird harrassing a Red-tailed Hawk that I just had to pass on.
Subversive Youth
At Steve’s request I’ll start October off with a cranky “gloom and doom” post. After all, I haven’t done one since I detailed the horrors of ice cream. Hard as it may be to believe (or not), a school district in New York state has a policy that doesn’t allow students to walk or ride …
More Idiots– and a Brave Dog
They always exceed your direst fears. The Lady with the Black Dogs sent me this link to a story about how Tesco, the huge British supermarket chain that buys most of New Zealand’s lamb, will no longer allow shepherds to use herding dogs. You couldn’t make it up: “The supermarket chain has told its major …
Watchful
As we left the desert allotment yesterday, this badger ran into its burrow, but stopping to have a good long look first.
Working girls
On Tuesday, we started shipping our lambs to another desert allotment here in western Wyoming, to combine our lambs with that of a friend’s, into one large herd. By the time the sale takes place in 10 days, there will be over 2,000 lambs in this bunch. Right now, there are four livestock guardian dogs …
The art of setting a snare
First, you tie some sheep legs to a large tree, using heavy cable, burying the spring to the snare at the base of the tree. Then you gingerly set thin steel strips and wire mesh in the snare so the animal will feel some support as it puts its foot into the snare. Next, add …
Rose hips, bear lips
We run sheep out in the sagebrush desert of western Wyoming, but we’re along the New Fork River, a major corridor for wildlife. It’s no wonder, with the amount of berries and rosehips covering our riverbottom, that bears would want to live here. Here’s Jim walking through the brush, looking at the rosehips.Our local problem …
The ongoing saga
Things are really busy on the ranch, with this being the time of year we should be finished with haying, and starting our fall sorting and shipping. The predation issues we’ve been dealing with have taken far too much time and effort, really screwing up our haying schedule, with the result being the rather difficult …
Another Mauser
I had long given up on my quest for the perfect Mauser,as detailed in several posts here– my 7 X 57 was sufficient, despite its “59 Cadillac” styling and lack of iron sights– I am old fashioned about them. So when an old friend, dryland farmer and craftsman Daniel Howell came to see me recently …