Devils Tower Poetry

    If any one is gonna be in the Devils Tower area this weekend there is great poetry and music gathering. It is on Sunday 1-4 pm . We went last year and just had a great time! Bring a picnic lunch.
  Until next time take care

The Wind River frozen a couple years ago.

Sunday stills - Pests and things that annoy you

Burdock is a plant that really annoy's me!! Have you ever had to pull it out of a dog or horse?

Here the Pests. Just red ants. I really wanted to get a picture of a sweat bee. They seem to always buzz around when your hands are full and can't swat them.

Also got a couple shots of some fly's.

Until next time take care

New Camera

  I got a new camera last week when we went Casper. Its a Fujifilm XP20. I don't know any thing about cameras. This one is suppose to be tough. The last one was suppose to be tough also. So Im learning how to use it. They don't give any directions for the functions, what they do, how to use them. You know that sort of thing. This one is a little bigger in the body than my old camera.  It sure is nice to see the whole screen and be able to change the settings. This is the screen on my old camera.

  So all the pictures that I have posted on here were taken with the screen like this. Im gonna keep the camera and still use it. I'll probably note that they were taken with old camera. Heres some pictures with the new camera. Just having some fun with this shot.

We will end today's post with a rainbow.

Until next time take care

Yesterday

  Yesterday morning, my boss sent me out to check and doctor some calves. This is the first time I doctored by myself. Pretty cool feeling. It went well, There is definitely room for improvement. But you got to start somewhere. I learned soooo much out in the pasture by myself.
  Then I spent the rest of the day on a swather making hay. Pretty dang good day. I got some pictures of the hay field. Here's the swather.

And a shot of the pivot.

We finished cutting the hay is this field last night. We let the hay dry a bit and let the baling begin. Now just one more field to cut.

My windrow's look like I gave Stevie Wonder a couple shots of whisky and the steering wheel to my swather. Haha
  Well until next time take care

Iced Tea

   What is better than a glass of iced tea on a hot day? Sharing the evening drinking iced tea with my beautiful wife. We make sun tea, well some times we make sun tea. Sometimes I just turn on the hot tap water and throw the tea bags in the jug. We make a special blend of tea. We use regular tea 6 bags to a gallon of water.....Oh yea we also throw in 2 peach tea bags. It gives it a really good flavor. Sometimes we use Constant Comment tea also. I'll let you guys in on some more of my cooking tips later. Until next time take care

State Fair

    We went to the Wyoming State Fair yesterday. Started out with the parade. Then we went over to Casper so I could get a pair of work/farming boots. We had lunch at a Thai food place. Really good food. It is so nice to be able to relax and enjoy a nice meal. Then we went over to the mall and I bought a new camera so now I can see what I'm taking pictures of. We then went back to the fair to look at all the exhibits and catch the PRCA rodeo. We wandered through the animal barns after the rodeo. Sharon had a good time with the sheep and goats but wasn't such a big fan of the pigs. Here's some pictures of the parade and rodeo. Converse county volunteer firefighters. I just thought these were neat trucks.

I love seeing teams of horses. This is Mike Cushmans team.

 I think this is the Douglas marching band.

This sheep wagon was perfectly restored. Looked awesome!

This next picture is classic!! A pretty nifty old tractor towing a manure spreader. If you look close you can see he put a cardboard cut-out of Obama in the manure spreader.

Here's the finish of an 8 second ride. I love watching the bucking horses.

Until next time take care. If you click on the picture they get bigger.

Wednesday's Work

   Today was a really good day. We prowled around checking cows, grass and water. My boss and I found  a couple calves that needed doctoring. So we roped them and gave shots.  I am learning so much from my boss on how to be a hand. He pointed out a couple areas I need to work on with my roping. We had a good talk about the bovine thought process. Trained on our horse's a bit also. Great day to be alive!
   After lunch we tore into the pick-up with the Hydra-bed. We are putting a new clutch in it. So the rest of the day was spent spinning wrenches. Man-o-man is there a lot that goes into putting in a clutch. We had to take the exhaust system off and both drive lines. Drop the transmission and transfer case. The life of a ranch hand is never dull.
  On a side note when we were riding past an old homestead house there was a Great Horned owl ten feet from us just watching us ride by. Pretty cool to see stuff like that. Until next time take care

Great weekend

    I got Saturday off so we took off Friday night and made the 5hr drive to Dubois the see family and friends. My nephew is staying with my Dad for a week so we stayed with him and had a really good visit. There was a lot of things going on there. There was chariot racing, quilt show and the Dubois fire department buffalo BBQ. Boy was it really nice to see a bunch of our friends. I got some pictures of the races, so enjoy! My friend Jed is driving this team. He won this race.

Here's my buddy Rusty. He's riding as an outrider for the chariots. He's there in case the team tries to run away. Boy, is it fun outriding! When the teams come to the end off the track, the outrider is racing along side the team to stop them if the driver needs help.

Here's crossing the Wind River going into my uncle's place.

Until next time take care

Good News

    My Dad and my nephew are visiting for a couple days! My nephew lives in California and my Pops picked him up at the Denver airport. So they are gonna stay here a couple nights before going to Dubois where my Pops lives. It has been almost 2 years since I've seen him. Man oh man has he grown, but I guess that happens. He's 10 now but it seems like just yesterday he was falling asleep in my arms watching cartoons. It is nice to get to spend time with him. We played the X-box tonight. I haven't played that thing in years. He smoked me on every game we played. Dang kid is really handy with computers.
      Yesterday on the work front. We were horseback! Woohoo!! We had a heifer get into the neighbors so we went to bring her home. We opened the gates to shove her home and she wasn't having any of that. We tried to push her nice and easy, but she took off the other way. She had no respect for us or our horses. So my boss dropped his rope down roped her. He got a hind leg. Thats about the time she really got on the fight. She was trying to take our horses. My boss was gonna teach her to lead. He told me to get my rope on her head and around one front leg. I just got the head. We ended up throwing her down and tied her. We left her to think about the errors of her way. We went and moved the heifers to another pasture and came back with the pick-up and trailer. My boss showed me how to load a cow into the trailer if I'm by myself. I'm learning tons! It's really cool all the tricks I'm learning! It was a really good day.
  Until next time take care

Our county

   The county we live in is the least populated in the great state of Wyoming. In the 2010 census we have 2,484 people living in Niobrara county. Here's the link to the info on our county. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niobrara_County,_Wyoming.  I really think it pretty cool that Rhode Island is half the size of us but their population is 500 times more than us. They have 500 people to our every 1. Thats just crazy! We have just 3 populated towns. Betcha Rhode Island can't say that! So happy I live in a place that has some room to stretch out and not bump someone. Until next time take care

Sunday stills -Sunrise or sunsets

Hope you enjoyed looking at my sunsets. Until next time take care

Last week

   Had alot going on here. We are in the middle of haying here. We just got the first cutting done so now we are waiting for the hay to be cut again. Its busy busy around here.
  We had Sharon's parents come up for visit. So that was really nice. Sharon taught her mom how to quilt. They had a good time sewing together. Jan my father-in -law ran the lawn mower and weed eater and just puttered around here. He got alot of stuff done. We went to Scottsbluff and got 2 screen doors for the house and got them hung on Sunday. WOW it is so nice to get air flow and no bugs! It was a great visit. I'm really lucky to have such great in-laws. We are enjoying eating outside. Here's Jan and Anita in the back yard. We are having burgers.

   We went to our county fair Saturday night for the Ranch Rodeo. The events were wild cow milking, sorting pairs, some roping. Jeepers I can't remember all the events. It was a good time though. It showed some of the stuff we do here on the ranch. So it gave the In-laws good idea of what we do here.

  Sharon and I went to the fair last night for the pig wrestling. If you have never seen pig wrestling it is something to see at least once! They have different classes there are little kids and they get small cute pigs, then the pigs just get bigger and bigger.

Well thats about it for now. I got to get back to the BBQ. We got steaks, diced potatoes with onion in aluminum foil and zuccichi grilling.  Until next time take care
  Here's a picture looking west from our home. If you click the picture they get bigger.