Thursday, January 10, 2008

Christmas gift.


I wanted to show a photo of a gift that I made for a friend of mine. We ordered the sign out of a catalog, and I built the brand and mounted it on the pipe. It will be displayed in his yard, next to his turnoff.

Contented Cattle





Here are a few photos of our late calving cows, on winter range. They will begin calving around the 25th of April, and so far all they owe us this fall is grass and some salt. I imagine sometime in Feb., we may start giving them a little cow cake to go with the grazing. If we don't get a bunch of snow, they should have nearly enough grass to get through the winter without supplementing them with hay. That is our goal anyway.


Sunday, January 6, 2008

A Sunday Drive






This afternoon a friend of mine and I went to North Dakota to see a cousin of mine who is in the hospital there. I picked him up and we headed across country on a bladed trail that may not have been a shortcut, but it was the scenic way to where we were headed. I snapped some pictures on the way, and they all happen to be taken from the grazing association that he is on. We did eventually hit a road that we made better time on, but this was the best part of the trip.


Saturday, January 5, 2008

Colors






We had the most beautiful colors just before sunrise this morning. I don't know if the pictures do it justice, but it is the closest I can get.

Hay handling and feeding.





Last week I built a bobcat mounted bale spear that was part of an old frame we had around here. It is for handling the 3x3x8 foot square bales we bought. They are fed to our replacement heifer calves we have on pasture. It is great hay, and the calves love it. I am also trying to get a horse ready to drive, and he is the solid colored one you see in the one picture. They make quite the matched team, don't you think. lol.


It has really warmed up again in the last few days, and we lost the skiff of snow we had. The temps. have been over 50 F. the last three days.

Wednesday, January 2, 2008

A contrast.



I believe it was in January of last year, we went from this........., to this.............


The first photo is of a prairie fire which was man made, and the last is burning slash piles in the hills west of us.


It sure can change in a hurry around here.

My "Stairway To Heaven" photo


A professional photographer my not agree that this is a great photo, but here is my favorite picture that I have taken.

It was taken in one of our winter pastures last winter.