Stuck in the mud again!

We got a SOS call when we were coming home from town to aid our men who got stuck while irrigating ....it was lunchtime...we had fried chicken and a gallon of milk in the groceries, but no glasses. We did have some clean plastic gloves behind the seat of the truck....and some scissors.....and we were thirsty after eating fried chicken....

Sooooo.....

Our newest little relative

This is the quilt his grandma made from material left from shirts and quilts she had made for his dad in years past. It is really neat!

When the Snow melts

When Chris went home at lunchtime, the melting snow had backed up at the ice and snow blocking a ditch behind his house...then it started washing around his old house and across his driveway. He dug a trench and it started melting the ice under the cattleguard.

May Day!! May Day!!

Thought I would post some familiar objects around the yard with their Mayday decorations in place! First, I had to go out and brush the snow off the satellite internet dish....

Note how the snow sits on the barbs of the barbwire fence!
I was reading a gardening book and it said pick plants and bushes that will look interesting covered with snow in the "non-green" seasons. I think the tulips pushing through the rocks might look interesting...

Signs of spring

One of the men saw the first water snake of the year today. The frogs are also singing their springtime songs. The winds are blowing and melting snow. The temp got almost to 60 degrees today. Now the weatherman says blizzard conditions return tonight and tomorrow... maybe a foot of snow some places.

George has been trying to turn on some irrigation ditches, but the headgates are deep in snow. You can see the creek is flooding behind the headgate.

Busy Days...

Fischer riding with Grandpa G.
Grandpa's helpers.

This thing is called a Nordfork. The wrestler pops it over the calf's neck when the ropers bring it in. One man can do the work of two wrestlers!
You will hear a generator in the background. We use electric branding irons because they stay heated in our "brisk" winds that never stop...even for branding day! Also the men are branding so many calves so fast, that it is hard to keep the propane type irons heated. When you are trying to get 600 done in a morning, you don't want to have to wait on anything!...or anybody!! ;) The two men in the foreground are wrestling a calf and Kacey Jo in the red sweatshirt, is insecticide ear tagging and notching, and filling syringes.

Comparing snowbanks....

Today, we finally saw Allison's sled appear again. They built a snow cave with Grpa the end of February, then we got tons of snow since then and we couldn't ever find the snow cave and the sled. Today we saw this flash of orange in the white drift in the front. You can see the dirty snow bank in the back that they dug into in February.