January snow
We’ve had inches, not feet, of snow…until today.
Tag Archives: snow
More Winter
Adolfo as St. Nick ( the snow was too deep to drive the cake to the waiting critters)
I feel like I’ve stepped into “Dr. Zhivago” with piles of deep snow everywhere. It’s more like an old-fashioned winter, and we are glad to have lots of hay in the stacks. Luckily the temperatures aren’t very cold (relatively speaking) and it just keeps snowing. I know this is making our friends in California very happy! Glad to help out, folks, but you could come help shovel the sidewalks!
Note the magpie who was riding the grub line.
Llamas on the feed line
waiting for feed in the Wyoming Field
Sadie the Border collie, Ranch Supervisor
Sadie supervising the bucks going up the hill
X marks the spot
Quoth the crow, “Nevermore”
Out like a lion
snow by the old barn
cows waiting for the sunset
We woke up this morning to almost a foot of fresh snow. We are starting to get some calves on the ground (or in the snowbank!) but yesterday’s wind had quit and it is pretty warm. This good wet snow will do us a lot of good.
Lilacs in waiting
Yup–those are ducks on the pond
likewise the honeysuckles
Winter’s comin’ on
It begins. 10 p.m. on October 3rd.
Honeysuckle bushes at 7 a.m., October 4th.
Haystack with flags, 8 a.m., October 4th.
April is (again!) the cruelest month
Our prayers were answered, and April has brought us showers, sort of. A week and a half of blizzards, wind and freezing weather has brought us blessed moisture, but at a terrible cost. We know–really we do–that a foot of wet snow will bring us green grass in a few weeks. We had begun to despair of much-needed moisture, and were trying to figure out how to get through the summer with dry conditions and no feed left over from last year.
While these storms have brought us up to above 100 per cent on our snowpack, they came while many of our neighbors were calving on the open range. We are calving some of our cows and heifers, and shed lambing our purebred sheep, Hampshire and Rambouillet, which we raise our own bucks from. The winds were so high, and variable that it crept in every crack in the lambing sheds. The oldest shed has a lot of cracks, which we usually figure are good for air circulation (less respiratory ills). This time, for the first time I can remember, lambs actually died from the weather, in the shed.
On the Red Desert we were getting ready to trail out, but the high winds caused the sheep to blow out, and mix with a neighboring herd. It took a few days to gather them up and sort them out, but they were finally able to “hit the trail” for the lambing ground.
We also lost several calves to the severe weather, but again, we had shelter nearby and I know that our losses were not nearly as bad as some of our neighbors who range calve. Several of them said that they won’t know their losses until they gather the cows for branding.
The storms have done us more good than harm, because no moisture means no summer feed. Some nice warm rains would be nice.
dead lamb in the lambing shed
Cows and sheep huddled against the fences
Snow-covered dead lamb
Live (!) calf in the calving barn
Loader with dead lambs (wrong date on Richar’s camera!)
Pregnant ewes sheltering in front of the lambing shed
Stolen kisses
Sunset, December 29, 2012
Snowflakes brush like kisses
stolen as Old Man Drought
looks the other way
not seeing sweet soft touches
that fall like caresses
filling the spaces
where dry has slowly,
inexorably pushed and sucked
and laid bare the rise and fall
of landscape.
Snow falls and falls
and fills the thirsty land,
the creekbeds and ponds,
the rills and runs of arroyos
dry so long,
now filled with promise
of flood and flash and
a possible future
of spring grass.
A spring that could be
green with feed
for those who hunger–
grasses fed by winter snows
that kiss the earth with wet
and the promise of rain.
Maybe drought’s doom
will not curse us forever.
Maybe these snowflakes
sent like kisses, wet brushes
against our cheeks
portend a promise
of green and grass
and prosperity.
A lover’s kiss.
Take that
Old Man Drought.
Ladder Ranch
