Deadman's Basin Reservoir

We took the weekend off and headed two hours north of our place to Deadman's Basin Reservoir for some fishing and camping with Jon's sister and family. Approaching Deadman's is like any typical drive in the country until you turn down a dirt road and crest a hill to find a giant lake nestled in between farm houses.


We thought we had the place to ourselves but on Saturday morning, we acquired neighbors on both sides. On our right, the jet skiers who insisted on riding directly on top of our fishing lines - thanks! On our left, the drunks with a boat. They were piss drunk at 9:00 am when they pulled up. I was expecting high entertainment, and hoping for no fatalities. There were neither.

When we returned, nobody asked if we had fun. They only asked, "Was it windy?" This particular reservoir is notorious for wicked storms that whip out of nowhere, capsizing boats and not too infrequently, drowning people.

The answer? I'll let you judge for yourselves.



On Saturday night, a storm did roll through. We hastily gathered everything in camp, stashed the chairs, weighted down our camper awning with massive logs, and took shelter.


We fished for salmon and trout, but caught a fair share of suckers and carp, which are junk fish.



We learned that Gus is fanatical about going after your fish as you reel it in. That dog has a serious chasing issue: squirrels, mice, rabbits, horses, sheep, cows, and now fish. Thankfully, he leaves the neighbors' cats alone.

Every time someone got a bite, he raced over and plowed into the water to attack the flailing fish. This is fine unless you like teeth marks in your dinner and digging fish hooks out of your dog's paw - which did not deter him, I might add. I only had one bite the whole weekend and I lost the fish because Gus tore the line as I was reeling it in.

For most of the weekend, Gus stood a few feet offshore waiting for a catch.


The Falcons brought their canoe and did a good bit of trolling in it. Taya, my niece who has the entire family wrapped around her five year old fingers, caught more fish than any of us! Not wanting to miss out on anything, she would yell, "ARE YOU GOING ON A BOAT RIDE?!?!" anytime we came within 20 feet of the canoe.

Laying Pipe

One of the irrigation methods used by farmers in these parts involves 20-odd foot sections of gated, 10-inch diameter PVC pipe. In the summertime, Jon and I often help our neighbor Josh put out pipe. If we are lucky, Josh comes to get us in the cool evenings and not in the heat of the day. Jon and Josh are just six months apart. Three generations of Josh's family live on our lane and so they grew up together - they will surely be lifelong friends.

For irrigation, water is diverted off of the Clarks Fork of the Yellowstone River and into the irrigation ditches that snake their way through the farmland. Having irrigated pasture is an expensive, but critical piece of farming out here. We are fortunate enough to have about half of our acreage irrigated and we pay dearly for it. While we don't farm our ground, we irrigate the fields to grow grass that we then lease to a rancher that runs cattle on our place. That money then pays for our shares of the irrigation ditches. Rinse and repeat, every summer and fall.

Farmers route the water into this pipe which has lots of little "gates" that they can open and close to control the flow of water. The gates are spaced on the pipe so that they flow perfectly in between the crop rows.

The pipe is heavy and takes two people to manage. First, you hook up the pipe trailer to the truck or the tractor. Then, if you are me, you get distracted by the old buildings on the farm and wander off.


This doesn't happen to Josh and Jon.

Oh right, we're loading pipe. I supervise while Josh and Jon load the pipe onto the trailer and then we pile into the vehicle and drive to the field.





If you are lucky enough to have three people working, one drives the truck while two pick the pipe off of the trailer, lay it down, and connect it like lincoln logs. The driver creeps just far enough forward so that the trailer is positioned exactly where the next pipe needs to go. It's a well-oiled machine.



It's a big help to Josh to have the extra hands for laying pipe, but to us it is just an opportunity to help out. The work isn't hard. It's a good time to socialize and it feels right to foster the sense of community we feel with our friends and neighbors.

Spring Break Retrospective: Fire and Ice

Turns out that the woodpile we stacked (I use the term "stacked" loosely) last summer became a hovel for mice. All of the dogs were extremely interested in the mice, but only our blind dog Cash pursued the mice with the intensity and focus of a Buddhist monk. He barely left that woodpile during the entire trip which was good because we needed someone to, er, watch the fire. Winds can pick up in an instant out at the ranch.




We choose carefully when to have fires and we watch carefully for flying embers and increasing wind speeds when the fire is burning.


Not only can winds pick up faster than you can say snap, severe weather changes are to be expected in the west. This same night it started snowing on our way into a movie in Red Lodge. When we got home, we lit the fire again to have a beer before going to bed. It was so cold outside that our beers were turning to slush in the bottles. The next morning we woke to this scene:

Spring Break Retrospective: Wood you?

If there is one thing I have learned about farms and ranches, it is that there is an unending supply of firewood and only a limited time of the year when you can burn it. For us, this fact is compounded because the people who rented the ranch for the past 20 years that we had to evict through a year-long battle in the Carbon County Court system didn't, um, clean up after themselves. Or their cows. Cows are rough on everything--they lean against and scratch themselves on trees, fences, and buildings. The result of slobs + cows = wood scraps scattered everywhere. It sometimes feels like all we do is move wood from pile to pile.

There are piles of lumber scraps.

There are piles of lumber.

There are piles of brush and branches.

Mixed piles of fencing, tree stump, branches, and an unidentifiable metal and concrete object.

And then there are the gigantic tree stumps that are too big to move.

That's when I call for reinforcements.

Here come the reinforcements.

I feel safer already.

Winter Playground

I found this picture of the homestead in Montana and thought I'd share it with everyone.

Kate and I have been doing a bit of construction around the Boise homestead since we returned from our Florida getaway. Our landing in Boise was uneventful even with 3 inches of snow on the runway! In the parking lot we were shocked to find 5 inches of snow covering Kate's Dodge Dakota. It snowed most days we we're away and has since snowed most of the days we've been back. Today was different though with 57 degrees most of our valley snow is gone. In the past week or so we've managed to do some snow construction in the front yard, snowshoe in the valley and at Bogus Basin. There has even been time for skiing and snowboarding! A bit of our handy work is pictured below.






We spent a few hours preparing for a snow battle that never happened. It's always good to be prepared isn't it?

Snowed In

South-central Montana and is getting hammered by the same storm that brought record-breaking snow to Boise a few days ago. The Clarks Fork Valley is buried under more than two feet of snow and it is predicted to continue snowing today. The view from the Red Lodge web camera looks pretty socked in.

We got a call this morning from the folks that have their cows on our ranch; they are trying to get a vehicle into the ranch to supply feed (hay) to the cows. With this kind of snow cover, the cows won't be able to forage for grass.

Carol, one of those ranchers, said that she has never seen a storm like this so early. Heavy, wet, spring-like snow will make getting in and out of our place nearly impossible.

Time Flies, and Then It Doesn't

It seems like our summer at the ranch just flew by us and much too soon, it was over. When I left Montana in mid-August, I was ready to come back to my urbane Boise. I longed for easy access to fresh, local, and organic produce and dairy products. I longed for more than one option for my local restaurant. I longed to have clean laundry on a whim, without having to scrub it by hand or haul it into someone else’s home. I longed to have an oven for baking.

But, it wasn't long before I found myself, um, longing for the ranch.

Longing for what? The simplicity of life out there, the ease of having a clear idea of what to do with my time, and of what work to accomplish. Somehow, having a myriad of options is overwhelming to me: Yoga? Shopping? Cleaning? Farmer's market? Festival? Fishing? Gardening? Socialize? Bike ride? I have learned to appreciate the satisfaction of having clearly defined goals for the day. Wake up, get your breakfast, get to work. I like the idea of knowing precisely why something is being done and being able to see the results; you irrigate to make the grass grow so the cows have food to eat, the roof is replaced so that it doesn’t leak, the trash is collected because it doesn’t belong in the field. 

The joy and luxury of our own laundry machines has quickly worn off and piles of laundry sit in various places around the house, waiting to be folded. I find myself making multiple trips to multiple grocery stores because the recipes I want to make are so freaking complicated. At the ranch my spice rack consisted of six things: oregano, basil, parsley, salt, pepper, and garlic. Yesterday I went to the store to buy flax seeds, whole wheat pastry flour, soy milk, rice milk, and brown rice syrup. (Fortunately, I already had the agave nectar.)

Jon and I have talked occasionally over the last weeks about missing the ranch. Yesterday, we had this conversation:

Me: “I think we might be overdue for a trip to the ranch.”
Jon: “Overdue? Why do you say that?”
Me: “Well, we’ve both been talking lately about missing it and we’ve been away a long time now.”
Jon: “Kate. It has only been a month.”
Me: “Just a month? Really?”
Jon: “Really. It was mid-August when we left and it is now only mid-September.”
Me: “Wow.”

Wheels turning, a few minutes later I actually initiated this ridiculous line of conversation:

Me: "How long do you think it would take to get to the ranch if we had a private plane?"
Jon: "Well, it depends on the plane. How big it is, how often you have to refuel."
Me: "Like a small plane, just big enough for us."
Jon: "In a small, two-seater plane it would probably take 6 – 8 hours."
Me: "Hmmph. So it wouldn’t really save us much time then. And we couldn’t bring the dogs."

Priorities

After more than 80 days working in Montana on our ranch I returned to Boise, and the many summer projects that need to be finished before school starts on August 25th. The list was very long a week ago, but we are crossing things off at a pretty quick rate. We've replaced a dilapidated screen door with a new Andersen glass door, replaced multiple door handles and deadbolts, power-washed the house and deck, repainted exterior doors and trim, built a bench on the deck, painted the deck, and done more yard work and weeding in the garden than one ever thought possible.

The trim repairs proved to be a bit more complicated than I expected. After removing the rotten trim I discovered a surprise; the old fascia boards were custom cut to fit together like a puzzle. To replace them would require a table saw. Off to Home Depot after doing some research on Consumer Reports. Creating the new fascia was a piece of cake with the right tools! We reevaluated some of the project priorities and decided that we needed a bench on the deck, and with the new table saw I figured I could handle it.



It was a chore to complete in the heat but we are quite pleased with our new addition!

Just as a side note, thinking of the ranch. Here's a picture of my 1965 John Deere 4020 with the loader. Althought it is nice to be home, I kind of miss the massive amount of daily labor that we managed to do every day on the ranch. I spent most of yesterday (and most of my next several days will be spent) catching up on my studies.

Coming soon...

I can't believe the last time I blogged was July 30th, and that I left ya'll hanging about the sheep. There are many more stories to tell about our summer that I'm sure we won't get to all of them.

I arrived back in Boise with Cash and Gus (the two sheep-marauding dogs) a week before Jon and Tucker and it is has been somewhat of a difficult transition for me and Gus. Per usual, Jon adapts readily but I am slower to ease into the old routine. I have been home for a week and a half and my suitcase is still sitting open and full on the floor of the guest bedroom. I find myself barely able to be inside the house. I find myself wanting for physical work on a scale that just isn't available here in the city; although, the backup of six weeks of yard work gave me a good run for my money. Gus quickly bored of the confines of our yard. He found a hole in the fence and decided to explore on his own. Fortunately, he didn't go too far and when I found him he was so excited that I had decided to join him for his adventure!

I am sure we will try to do some posts about a few more things from the ranch, but for the most part, life will move on. School starts at BSU on August 25th for both me and Jon. Just like last semester, my night class falls on one of the few nights that Jon doesn't have class. Arggh! But, a friend of mine will be in the class with me which will make it much more enjoyable. Jon starts his clinical nursing rotations so the semester should be very interesting and busy for him.

Summer is not yet over and I hope it has treated you all well. We will make the most of what remains.

Summer Photo Log

Finally home! I returned to Boise on Saturday evening after a nice 12 hour drive through Montana and Idaho. We chilled out for a night and then started our long list of projects we've got to do here at our house. Gardening and yard work were first on the list. There was also a good bit of laundry and house cleaning intermingled throughout most of the day. I've added pictures to our photo repository from our summer so far. You can see the mess our renters left behind, the clean-up effort. We got so many things done, most importantly the transformation of our ranch from a junk pile to a cozy place to stay.

I just installed a dog door for our 3 boys, they seem confused. I think they prefer having a doorman. We'll write more later, enjoy the photos!

Zzzzzzzzzzz

Last night was a sleepless one--or at least sleep only in short bursts. Since we moved the camper to be closer to the bath-house, there are more sounds from the nearby pastures and hills. Between the coyotes howling, the dogs barking at the coyotes, and then the dogs howling with the coyotes, last night's sleep was fitful at best. I woke three times that I recall to a canine symphony starting with yipping and howling coyotes in the not too far away distance, joined by barking dogs in three pitches: Tucker, Cash, and Gus, building to a cacophony of barking and howling dogs and coyotes. We looked out the camper window to see Cash with his nose pointed high in the air singing, "aaaawwwwwooooooooooo!"

And somewhere in between was this sleepy conversation:

--unidentified animal noise--

--barking dogs--

Jon: "What was that?"
Me: "It was a cow."
Jon: "That was NOT a cow."
Me: "No? I thought it sounded like a cow."
Jon: "It sounded like a mountain lion."
Me: "I didn't think we had mountain lions down here."
Jon: "Me neither. Maybe it was a bobcat."
Me: "Okay, now I am totally freaked out and I have to go to the bathroom."

All of this makes me nervous because tomorrow our neighbor is putting 20 ewes and their lambs in our orchard and corral areas to eat down the grass. It is a mutually beneficial agreement: our grass needs to be eaten and the sheep are hungry.

But, I am worried about the coyotes preying on the sheep. Our neighbor says as long as our dogs are around the sheep should be fine. I am worried about the dogs chasing the sheep, or worse, because our dogs aren't accustomed to livestock. Our neighbor says his sheep are used to dogs, but still, I worry.

Really, I couldn't sleep last night worrying about it. Then again, maybe it was the coyotes...

Cascade Fire

Once again, most news agencies are reporting about the California wildfires, but other areas are burning as well. The Cascade fire in southwestern Montana is pretty close to the ranch--about 15 miles as the crow flies. This is basically the view that greeted us on Saturday afternoon as we returned from Cody, Wyoming:

Photo: LARRY MAYER/Billings Gazette Staff

Our ranch is not in any imminent danger, but our quaint little haven of Red Lodge is indeed.

Cascade Fire Map Courtesy of Tom Kohley for www.redlodge.com (amended with place names)

The fire has continued to burn unabated (it is 0% contained after four days), consuming 5800 acres so far. We can see the fire's smoke from the ranch and yesterday while in Red Lodge for pizza, we saw and heard C130 planes and Sikorsky helicopters flying above town.

High winds of 20 - 40 mph are expected tonight which could push the fire into the town. I'm really hoping that doesn't happen. Click here for more pictures of the fire activity.

Happenings

We’ve been mighty busy over the last several weeks working on the ranch out here in Montana. We’ve hauled nine loads of refuse to either the dump or the recycling company; the loads have ranged from 2200 pounds up to 4000 pounds. We’re down to a fewer number of small piles that still need to be hauled into the Billings. I wasn’t sure we’d ever find the end of the trash piles and I’m sure that when the tall grass is gone we’ll find more garbage hiding, waiting for us to load and haul.

The little house we are planning to renovate is finally cleaned out! Sadly, we came to the realization that we would not be able to do very much construction work on it this year. We emptied and sorted all of the stuff that had been stored inside: furniture, paperwork, bottles, jars, and other household accessories. We then removed all of the drywall, the floors, the doors, and the trim. We had a structural engineer who specializes in historic homes come out and evaluate it and to our delight, he said it was in unusually good structural condition, particularly given it's age of probably 100 years or more. It doesn't look like much, I know, but it will!




As an interim solution to our current “camp living” situation, we had the idea of converting an old lambing barn into a bath house. It’s only 12’x16’ but it will have all the amenities of a small home: toilet, vanity, shower, washing machine, bed, and refrigerator. The major stuff such as roofing, electrical, and plumbing are complete and the toilet, sink, shower, and floor are in as well. It’s amazing how special it feels to have a toilet that flushes. The shower is nice as well, not only for me, but also for everyone that spends any time around me!




We even made time to throw in a flagstone patio out front, made from slate collected around the property.

One of the summer's big projects was to upgrade all of the electrical services on the ranch. Everything was brought to current code requirements and the service was expanded to several new areas. Our houses and outbuildings are no longer unsafe.

The main shop also got a shiny new roof! I liked the aesthetics of the cedar shingles that we had to cover up, however the rain and sunshine that could be seen or felt from the inside were not so desirable.


In our efforts to practice sustainable grazing, we decided to lease our pasture to some neighbors that need a place for 28 pairs (cows with their calves) of Charolais cattle . This decision meant I had to do a bit of fencing, so I spend about four hours today working on the fence that forms the boundary around our 80 acres of paradise.

Earlier in the summer, the plan was to mow the four or so acres around our outbuildings, orchard, and corrals, but the grass grew so fast we didn’t have time to pick up the junk and tree limbs. As I drove home one night, I noticed our neighbor tossing hay to his sheep because he had run out of grass for them to eat in his pasture. Perhaps I didn't need to mow it, but could lease it to our neighbor for his sheep--sheep make great lawnmowers! The neighbors came down to check it out and agreed that there was a lot of good grazing to be had. So now I’ve also got to fix that section of fence. It seems like no matter how much we get done, there’s always more to do out here in Big Sky Country. Sorry for posting so few pictures, more to come! I've got to get out and move some water!

Surfacing

The search is over, the vigil and memorial in North Carolina have passed. Nancy's family has returned to Canada for a few days and I guess this is the time when many of us will try to create a degree of normalcy in our lives.

Sunday was the first day that I didn't think about Nancy, her death, and her family incessantly. Monday, yesterday, was the first day that I didn't wake up thinking about Nancy. For days, I would wake in the morning and realize that I had already been thinking about her before I even realized I was awake. At times my grief was paralyzing and at times it felt distant because of my geography.

Life and death roll on.

Our friend Mike, who we met in Boise and who later moved to San Francisco, visited us in Bridger for a long weekend. We explored the reaches of nearby natural wonders in Yellowstone National Park and the Beartooth Pass.

Our Montana neighbors lost one of their dogs; Kathleen went to check water near the highway and her deaf dog wandered into the road.

Our work on the ranch continues with the realization that we will not finish the little house this summer and the conversion of an old lambing barn into a new bath-house.

Tucker supervises the electrical work on the bath-house (if only he had thumbs).

Log Cabin

This is the original log cabin that was built on the property. At one time, a friend of Jon's father had plans to deconstruct it and rebuild it on his property. His numbering system didn't work and he wasn't able to keep track of the pieces, thus the pile of logs we eventually used to build a makeshift enclosure for the dogs.

The dogs quickly learned to jump over our little fence, so in part that was a wasted effort although the logs needed to be moved anyway. Good thing there is a larger fenced area of several acres to keep the dogs somewhat contained.

The log cabin is small, and in later years was re-purposed as a pig sty. Literally. Nowadays, the roof needs alot of work and there are inches, perhaps feet, of old manure inside. There are no plans to do anything with it; for now it is just a historic novelty.