X marks the heifers
Heifers hanging out–
no need to share our worries
about winter, snow
Powder Flat in winter
Yuletide heifers
sun over Powder Flat
Tag Archives: Powder Flat
Ready to brand
Bringing in the cows and calves
It finally stopped raining long enough to allow us to brand some calves. Clouds were threatening, but with lots of good help, we got through them. They were, as my Dad used to say, “Big enough to get ahold of.”
cows checking the clouds
Eamon watching Jeff chase the errant cow
Jeff bringing her in
Jeff and Mike watching the calves
Shearing 2019
ready for the shearers
heading up the chute
Alejandro helping ewes up the chute
bucks ready for a fleecing
shearing with skill
down the ramp
Ten pounds lighter!
shorn sheep
Cora with wool packer
wool ready to pack
Oscar and Meghan
Pepe processing ewes
all hands and the cook
Shearing 2018
Wooly ewe with bell
Photo by Elizabeth Campbell
2018 shearing is complete. The crew showed up in a timely manner, the ewes moved through in an orderly manner, and we thanked our lucky stars because many years bring problems, from weather to a late crew to the late arrival of our sheepherders from Peru.
First the ewes trailed from their winter pasture on the Red Desert to Badwater, which is spring and fall country. The shearing crew showed up and set up their shed and baler. We brought the bunches through, staging them for the trail south to the lambing grounds. We got two days of rain, which was welcome, but finished in time to trail several days ahead of lambing.
We then moved on to Powder Flat, where the ewes who had lambed in March were still in the wool, and the bucks, still in their red “working clothes”, awaited. We had a glitch when my dog, Cora, hit the automatic locks on the pickup as I was hauling the shearing shed to Powder Flat. Unfortunately, the pickup was at the main gate (fondly know as The Portal), and my phone was inside. After several hours, which included a long walk, much unhitching and hitching and dragging heavy vehicles around with a tractor, we were able to haul the shed to the waiting shearers and get started. Pat brought the extra keys, liberating the truck and the dog.
After two half days, all were sheared and ready to head into the spring season and events.
Border collie with sheep
Photo by Elizabeth Campbell
Ewes, waiting to be sheared at Badwater
Sharon at Badwater
Wooly sheep in chute
Photo by Elizabeth Campbell
Newly sheared ewes
ewes at Badwater shearing
shearing, with shed and truck
David on the wool bales
Hampshire bucks waiting for the shearers
Rambouillet bucks
shorn ewes with lambs at Powder Flat
Rhen supervises the loading of the chute
Riley and Siobhan, back to back
Rhen at the Craig Wool Warehouse
Spring is rushing over us!
Spring has definitely sprung, if not with weather, then with spring work. After a dry winter, we have had series of spring rains and snows. In the meantime, we have lots of baby lambs and calves arriving. We are trailing sheep to spring country and preparing to shear.
Cows with calves at Powder Flat
Heifer eating afterbirth
Wild horses watering at developed well
windmill from the ground
ewes and lambs
docking the early lambs
bum lambs in a box
lambs warming up in a tub
rainstorm with Battle Mountain
Through a lens, iPhonely
Winter sheep with southerly sun
Pat’s birthday present was a new set of lenses for his iPhone. Here’s some photos he took at Powder Wash trying out the new lenses. Watch this space for future pics.
If the blackface and some of the whiteface ewes look roundish in these photos, that’s because they will start lambing in a month or so. You can also see how little snow there is. The winter continues to be warm and dry, and we continuously check the weather report for promises of snow. My Dad always said that a wet spring beats a hard winter, so we can hope!
Powder Mountain
ewes on the feed line
Powder Rim
Which one of these is not like the others? (Hint–look at the color of the ears.)
Cattle and sheep co-existing symbiotically
H
Solar Well
Heifers watering at Powder Flat
Sunshine does the work
Drawing up ancient water
Slaking heifers’ thirst
Year’s End haiku
Solstice sunset at Powder Flat
The sun swings southward
rising now just past the slope
of Flattop Mountain.
Solstice bringing short
days and long nights, at long last
finding its nadir,
And now, blessedly,
it will not seek a further
dark’ning nor shrinking
Of sunshine, daylit
hours. Now begins a dawning–
first gleams further north.
As light grows longer
morning shine extending time
and dusk now later
And later each day,
the world breathing in, and out
since Fall equinox
Led the moon and stars,
turning day into darkness,
stealing time each turn
Of the earth around
the sun, then leaning away
each revolution.
The pole star blazing
earlier as each nighttime
stole hours of sunshine.
Now we begin the
pendulum swinging northward,
toward the springtime,
It seeks a turning
Away from the magnet pull
That drew it southward.
Now the poles reverse
Morning’s rays creeping northward
Toward Sheep Mountain,
Toward equinox
when the heaven’s days and nights
will become equals.
But for now, solstice
in the winter, in the cold times
end times, renewal
We don’t sacrifice
animals. We don’t light fires
and burn Yuletide logs
Though we string shining
ropes that glitter and sparkle,
that glisten and glow
Yet we count the hours
for we know the sun returns
and the nighttime shrinks.
Our superstitions
replaced by certain science
daylight will rebound
Instead we sing songs
of praise, and adulation–
the birth of our Lord
Heralding the time
when the rising of the sun
fulfills the promise
Of the infant child
whose birth, foretold by shepherds,
attended by beasts
By cows, by donkeys,
by sheep bleating in the night
calling to the Babe
And we know by faith
and by our experience
that daylight returns.
So in the meantime
we sing and we celebrate,
this blessed season.
New ewes at Powder Flat
Julie Hansmire talking sheep
We recently bought a nice set of Merino yearling ewes from Colorado producer Julie Hansmire. We loaded the ewes near Edwards and trucked them to our headquarters at Powder Flat.
off the truck
That haystack looks pretty tasty!
Settling into their new home
Ladder Ranch
