Posted by Preston on November 30, 2005, 3:48 pm I think we still have about 50 head more here in Canyon Creek pasture. We will work on getting them gathered up next week.
10/17/05
A small crew and all are veterans this week. Brian from N.H. is here for two weeks. Walter from MD. is here for two weeks as well. Don from Ohio, Wayne from Fla and his brother Robert from Ky. make up the rest of the crew.
I told them they were our Guinea pigs for how we are going to do things next year.
On the way home from Albq. we stopped and loaded two hundred bales of hay for the calves. It was a heck of way to start the week.
The corrals are full of calves we hauled in last week and I am not real happy with the way things are in there. We don’t have enough feed stations and are wasting 50% of the hay we are feeding. And also not enough water stations and the timid ones are not getting enough.
So today we put in a workday. All of the guys pitched in and we assembled the three feeders Maggie bought last week and then built a sixty -foot feed bunk out of logs and posts. Then we hauled panels from the arena and shored up a couple more pens. By the end of the day we were pretty dang wore out but we now had a really well set up feed lot consisting of six corrals, seven feed stations and four water stations.
All this after unloading the hay first thing after breakfast.
Don spent the day cutting firewood for all the cabins. Something we just hadn’t gotten around to doing.
The work we did would have taken me a week if I had ever gotten to it at all.
10/18/05 Tuesday
I left about 5:30am to take the trailer back to the hay farm, I got home about 3pm.
Everyone else went out to camp and started gathering more calves. They rode about six hours and came home with six calves. We are now looking for the ones with the smart moms who are hidden out. They are tough to find in a 14,000-acre pasture.
It was a bit windy out there; it kicked up late in the day bringing in some cold air with it.
Hi was 60…low was 28
10/19/05 Wednesday
We worked the south side of the main road back to the Wilderness boundary. We gathered everything we could find back there and moved them out to the Basin. By the time we were all done we had about a hundred head and sorted through them coming up with 11 calves to wean and haul home as well as six old cows we are hauling back and putting in the north trap till we have enough for a load to the sale. Brian has been staying out with Nate at camp while the rest of us have been back at H.Q. each night. We feed the calves in the morning before we go and feed them when we get home in the evening.
When I pulled into the corrals I found Wayne who had taken the day off from riding down there feeding by himself. He told us Leasha was sick, Maggie was cooking and he was doing the chores. This is the kind of help we like!
10/20/05 Thursday
We got to camp at a pretty decent hour and quickly saddled up. Maggie came out with us today to give some help.
Brain and Nate were already riding; they went on their own plan of gathering around Pine canyon.
Our plan was to gather as much as we could of the cattle we had left in the Basin and get them moved into 7HL. We had to spend a good part of the day gathering around the Basin and then finally mid afternoon we got moving with about 85 head of cows. We went up the Basin and through Wolf Camp gate and from there tried a short cut over T Bar Ridge that worked out. We put the cattle through a gate in Hidden Valley and let them drift down from the ridge. It was a long push and everyone had a lot of work to do. We got back to camp with just enough light to unsaddle. We got home about 9pm, Leasha was still not there so Maggie whipped up some white trash food and we all happily ate it.
Hi was 60, no wind after a low of 29.
10/21/05 Friday
It was a shorter day than we have had in the past. We gathered cattle from the Canyon Creek and Pine canyon area pushing them north to the Incognito gate. We put about thirty head through the gate. There were some more cattle up on the mountain to our east so Nate along with Brian and Don headed up there while the rest of us headed back to camp to fix a few things around there and start loading up some stuff we had to haul back to H.Q.
We all got home abit after dark and found Maggie had whipped up a great meal that sure made up for the last couple meals.
I can’t thank this crew enough for all the work they did. Every morning they were up feeding the calves before breakfast in the dark. Loading hay bunks and filling water tanks. Then an hour drive out to work, saddle horses, and ride all day. Then a long drive home and feeding again in the dark. It sure wasn’t much of a vacation!
10/22/05 Saturday
Maggie and I took the crew back to Albq. hauling a load of claves with us to take to the sale. Nate hauled a load up as well. We took the Grade B calves. These are the ones that just aren’t perfect. Some are a bit too small, some are too big, some just don’t have the right body type, some have ears too big and some have too much white. All these things make a difference in the price. We hauled 22, so out of 210 calves just 22 Grade B is not bad.
We did some errands and then went out to dinner. A nice little break.
10/23/05 Sunday
We picked up just three folks for our last week, making a total of five counting Walter and Brian who stayed over a second week.
They spent the weekend at the ranch doing chores. Lyndsey has been sick since Thursday so they took the load off here. They had their hands full feeding calves and hauling water.
We picked up Charlie from De. and Barry from Tx. Charlie has been here four or five times and this is Barry’s’ third trip out I think. Our last newbie of the year is Rhian from Wales.
Again we stopped on our way home and picked up a couple hundred bales of hay getting the week off to a good start.
10/24/05 Monday
After unloading the hay we headed out to Canyon Creek camp. Nate is now sick along with Lyndsey.
The horses had been hanging around camp all week but of course today they were nowhere in sight. It wasn’t until about noon I found them way up on T Bar Ridge about five miles from camp. Once we got saddled we rode Pine Canyon getting a few head from there moved over to juniper tank. It was a nice easy break in day and we got something done as well.
Brian drove everyone except Barry back to H.Q. He stayed out at camp with me and helped with chores there. The other guys helped do chores in the dark when they got home. Leasha is back from her sick time so they at least had a good meal waiting for them.
Barry and I had a great night of camp chat around the table near the woodstove in the cabin. We pretty much solved most of the world’s problems.
10/25/05 Tuesday
The crew got here about 8:30, Barry and I had the horses all fed and we were long ready to go. But those folks had a bunch more chores to do before they could leave. Maggie came along and Nate is back in action again.
We did a big gather covering a lot of country. I took half the crew up the Basin while Nate took the others up the Mesa. We met at the north end of the Basin a few hours later. We had about 80 head and we then turned them west and went through Wolf gate and over T Bar Ridge. The same route we took last week. The cattle moved along better than they did last week.
It was pushing Dark when we made it back to camp so Walter and Charlie headed home with Maggie and Nate to get feeding done there. Barry, Brain and Rhian stayed out at camp with me. We had a good time. The cabin is getting to feel like home.
The weather has been great for weeks now. I have never seen a fall like this one. Days are in the 50’s and 60’s and the nights just down to the mid 20’s.
10/29/05 Saturday
The last couple days slipped by me. They were busy. Feeding riding gathering and moving cattle. We are getting so late in the season I just can’t trust the weather will hold so we are now just putting the cattle into Pitchfork pasture rather than the long push into 7HL pasture. It will mean more riding in the weeks to come but it gets them out of Canyon Creek pasture. The urgency in this is that when winter finally does come we will no longer be able to get out here via motor vehicle. Only way would be a five-hour horse ride and then there is the problem of feed for horses once you get here since we have no barn or anywhere to stock it ahead of time.
We put 105 more cattle through the Incognito gate.
Don from Fl. showed up Wednesday, he’s here for a week or so helping with some end of the year things.
We had our usual Halloween party Friday night. It was fun but much more subdued than the last few years. I think we wore everyone out this week.
It was a great crew to end the year with. Both crew the last two weeks have helped us get just about back on schedule. A bunch of workers they were and willing to do what ever it took to get things done. They are the kind of folks we need to have around here. Many thanks to them all and also lots of thanks to everyone who came to visit this year. You all make it all worthwhile.
Message Thread:
« Back to thread