Starting the New Year!

Happy New Year!

By Wednesday afternoon Barry had finished cutting the hay.  They hay has to then lay on the ground and dry out for a day or so before it can be rolled into bales.  That is why it is so important that it does not rain between when the hay is cut and when it is baled.  While Barry waited for the hay to dry, he put the large sprayer on the back of the tractor and sprayed blackberries down around the cabin.  Kathrin and I moved the spider fence in the horse paddock and I went around and sprayed the baby black berries that were attempting to grow unseen in the tall grass.  We also opened the gate at the top of the goat fence and placed a salt block near the gate in the hope that the goats would wander into the next paddock all by themselves. 

  Well, animals never cooperate the way you want.  None of the goats ventured out the gate, so Thursday morning we mounted horses and pushed them out the gate and moved the salt block to just inside the next paddock.  We left the gate open into the old paddock so that if any of the nanny goats had left their children hidden back in the old pasture, they could go back and bring them into the new paddock.  

   In the afternoon, Kathrin and I went into town for a routine doctors appointment for Kathrin.  The library and some of the other shops were still closed for the Christmas holidays, so we didn’t get to do much shopping other than picking up the few groceries we needed.  On the way back from town, we stopped by Tuilp’s house to take a look at his year old heifer cows.  Heifers are female cows that have not had a calf yet.  After visiting Tulip, we dropped by Desiree and Andreas’ house to pick up Kathrin’s laptop which Andreas had taken home with him at Christmas to add some new software to.  Andreas then taught Kathrin how to set-up and change her own web-site so that she can be the webmaster for the Jagumba web-site.  Andreas originally set up the web-site for her. 

Tulip's year old heifers.

Kathrin raking the hay into rows

Friday morning Kathrin and Barry started raking and baling the hay.  Kathrin operated the small tractor with the rake on the back to gather the hay into rows.  Then Barry came along behind her on the bigger tractor with the baler to pick up the hay, roll it, and then deposit large bales of hay in his wake. 

The baler after just depositing another bale of hay

 Meanwhile I spent the morning weeding the large garden at Billy’s Cabin.  The grass has grown just as fast as the corn and potatoes, so it was slow going hoeing out all of the weeds.  In the afternoon I came back to the house and worked on weeding the orchard that is near the saddle shed.  I had mowed most of the grass between the rows of trees that morning with the riding lawn mower.  Therefore in the afternoon I worked on mowing between the trees with the hand mower, taking down the shade cloth from around the trees, and pulling out the weeds from around the bases of the trees.

The orchard before I mowed it.  The grass is about thigh high.

Saturday, Kathrin and Barry once again spent the day raking and baling hay.  I stayed back at the house to do some chores.  In the earlier afternoon my first visitors arrived.  Ben, Barry’s nephew, his wife Christen, and their two children came up for the day to go fishing and play in the river.  They stopped briefly, and then headed down to check-in with Kathrin and Barry before heading off the have some fun.  Later on, another packhorse-man came through on the national trail.  This man, unlike the previous packhorse riders, was walking and leading his horse rather than riding.  He said it was great improvements to have the horse carry all the supplies rather than carrying them in a bag on his back. 

Field full of newly made bales of hay.

Since the trail walker was going to camp down at the river near Billy’s, I decided to accompany him down while riding Sambo so I could also check and see how Kathrin and Barry were getting along.   The baler had broken down when I arrived, but luckily Ben was able to help Barry fix what was wrong and Barry was soon back chugging along making bales of hay.  Sambo and I returned to the house shortly after that so I could make ice cream and cobbler.  Ben and his family stayed for dinner and we had a wonderful New Year’s Eve, even if we didn’t stay up until midnight. 

The first day of 2012 was very hot!  Barry and I spent the morning moving the rolled bales of hay into the fenced in orchard behind the garden at Billy’s where they would be safe from cattle and could be easily covered with large tarps. 

Barry carring two bales of hay on the tractor.

Barry was able to carry two bales of hay on the tractor, one of the front tongs, and one on another set of back tongs.  Barry also used the tractor to load a bale of hay on the back of the ute and another on the trailer that the ute was hauling. 

Ute and trailer with bales of hay

 I got to drive the ute, which was a new and educational experience since the ute is a manual and I have only ever driven an automatic.  Barry also taught me how to tie a trucker’s sheep shank to use to tie down the bale of hay on the trailer.  While we moved hay, Kathrin worked on weeding the garden. 

  While we had been hauling hay, Ben and his son, Sam, came by and brought some parts to help fix the tractor.   So once we had finished, we all went back to the house for lunch, and then Kathrin, Sam, and I went swimming in the water dam in the horse paddock behind the house.  Ben came along and stood on the shore to watch and keep the horses away from our towels and shoes. 

Me in the inner tube and Ben keeping the horses away
from our things on the bank.

The horses were very curious about our newest set of strange antics as the three of us floated about in the sun warmed water on inner tubes.  The horses would sneak up to the shore and then run off.  Then they would come back and look at us.  Eventually Joringle, one of the horses, came all the way down into the water and lay down in it.  He even let Kathrin come over and pet his nose while she was floating in her tube. 

Joringle coming in for a roll in the water.

Once Joringle came out of the water, the horses’ curiosity seemed to be satisfied and they went off to graze.  We also shared our swimming hole with six of the dogs. 

Kathrin throwing a stick for Spike to fetch,
Sprocket is watching in the background.

We found that Brownie, one of the kelpie puppies, is a very good swimmer, he will even leap out into the water, but Bouncer, his brother, does not like the water at all.  I did manage to pull Bouncer onto my tube with me and we went for a cruise around the dam.  Sprocket loves the water, and if you grab onto her tail, she will pull you in your inner tube across the length of the water.  And Kathrin put Tobi, the smallest dog, onto an old boogie board.  Sam towed Tobi across while Kathrin helped to keep the board from tipping over.  Tobi went for a ride twice across the dam, and he obviously liked it. 

Kathrin and Sam towing Tobi across the water.

   We had fun playing in the water during the hottest part of the day.  After we got out and dried off, Ben went and helped Barry repair the tractor, while Kathrin and I finished mowing and weeding the orchard up here at the house. 

Wolf Spider that I found hiding in the shade cloth we
removed from around the trees in the orchard.

  That evening I put Ranger out of the orchard, where he has been living since he came here, and let him out into the larger paddock near the yards with Missoula (his foster mom) and her foal, Alzada. 

    On Monday morning I finished up some college application writing while Kathrin and Barry serviced the solar batteries that store the solar energy.  After lunch, Kathrin and I went for another lovely, cool swim with all the splashing dogs.  Then Kathrin and I went for a ride around the goat paddock to check the fences for goats caught in the mesh fence by their horns.  And in the afternoon we worked with the horses. 


Kathrin riding Dakota in our new riding area.
Recongnize the colorful barriers?

In the evening when the temperature wasn’t quite so high, Barry came with us to muster the cows into the field we had just hayed.  When we muster cows, we do it the same way as we muster the goats.  We all ride on horseback and take a few dogs along to help us keep the cows bunched together.  That evening we took Baxter, Chickadee, and Brownie.  Brownie did very well; he is a very enthusiastic cow dog.  There are two roads from the house to get down to Billy’s Cabin and the hay fields.  The roads run through a large paddock, and are on either side of a thick section of forest.  On the road we took, we only found six cows.  So we drove them into the paddock.  We had to return to the house because of the fading light, but we left the gate to the field open so the other cows could get in when they found their mates inside eating all the nice hay that didn’t get rolled into bales. 

Cows peacefully grazing in the paddock at Billy's.

 The next morning, after Skypeing with my family, I finished doing my daily chores of feeding Ranger and catching all the horses.  It was then decided that we should go down and see if we could find where the other cows were and then herd them into the hay field.  Once again we went down one road and looped around up the other, but we couldn’t find the cows.  Later we found them down under the shade of the trees in the hay field where we couldn’t see them from the road.    By the time we returned from our ride, the sun was pouring down intense heat.  We took refuge in the house during lunch.  And then after lunch Jianne came over and we three ladies went for a refreshing swim in the dam.

Jianne getting a tow from Sprocket

 After our swim, Kathrin and I once again rode around the goat fence.  Then we moved the spider fence in the horses paddock to give them some new grass to eat.  Finally, as the sun started to sink, it began to cool off. So Kathrin and I rode horses down to Billy’s to weed and water the garden.  We rode back to the house as the stars were coming out and we could just see our moon shadows. 

On Wednesday morning, we hurried down to the large garden at Billy’s.  Barry sprayed all the weeds that are growing in the sections we are not using, then he went to Corryong to buy some large tarps to cover the hay with.  The morning was warm and humid, but not overly scorching since there was light cloud cover.  I finally finished weeding and hilling all the potatoes.  Hoeing out all the grass was a lot of work!  Then I ran water down each of the ditches between the rows of crops.  I had to make large dams of dirt at each end so that the water would stay in the ditch and made sure that the water flowed evenly to all parts of the ditch. 

Ditches watering the crops

Kathrin and I returned in time for lunch.  In the afternoon, Kathrin and I performed surgery on Ranger.  Ranger had an umbilical hernia, where his umbilical cord was.  The hernia was a sac of skin that hung down under his belly. 

Ranger's umbilical hernia

The hernia was not actually hurting Ranger, but it is like an elongated hole into which his intestines could eventually fall into, which would then cause a kink in the length of his intestine.  Now that Ranger has grown so much, Kathrin and I couldn’t lift him up onto a table for the operation, so we put the bucket on the tractor and once Ranger started to fall asleep from the anesthesia, we tipped him onto pillows inside the bucket.  Then Kathrin lifted the bucket up to table top height and performed the necessary surgery. 

Ranger alseep in the bucket on the tractor.

First she had to cut out the excess skin that made the sac, and then she sewed up the hole.  It may sound like a fairly easy surgery, but she had to do it under a time constraint.  Near the end of the operation, Ranger started to wake up, and he wanted to kick, but we had fortunately tied his feet back so he couldn’t injure Kathrin or himself.  While we had Ranger there, Kathrin also castrated him.  When Ranger woke up, he was a bit wobbly, so I walked him back to his paddock and he was soon munching grass once again.       

I hope that this new year of 2012 is the year that all of your hard work bears fruit, all your love is returned, and all your dreams become reality.

Brownie

Hana