Sharp Minds and Warm Hearts

Last week we had the pleasure of hosting 12 students from Whitman College who are spending a month in Wallowa County studying the concept of "resilience" as it applies to communities and natural resources. 

Communication trailer with satellite link and solar panels

Student tents along the river

The students spent the week in field trips with local residents. They learned about fisheries and Nez Perce history from Joe McCormack. Mike and I spent a day hiking and visiting with the students, sharing information on rangeland ecology and how our small family ranch works. At the end of the week they took a horseback ride to the Snake River with Mary and Nora Hawkins (Del Sol Adventures) and learned about outfitting and recreation in Wallowa County.

Studying plants up spring draw

 Field sketch

It was wonderful to have the company and conversation and to take time to think big-picture and reflect on the changes in our community. The students are collecting their observations and at the end of the month will create a Wallowa County Almanac. I hope we can get together again while they are in the County and I can't wait to read what they write and see their drawings in the Almanac.

Found a rattlesnake on the river hike

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Mike answers questions above the cut-bank

Best way to end the day, music and campfire

    From Sara at Magpie Ranch, home of Bunchgrass Beef

Bass Weaver's Outhouse

Salvaged parts

Gabe thinks it through

This tumble of old boards is really a 100 year old outhouse, built by Bass Weaver. The boards are hand split tamarack and the framing was pine round-wood, from limbs or small trees, not super straight.

Instead of letting the pile rot into the ground, Mike decided to salvage what he could and resurrect this amazingly durable piece of history for modern use.

Luke digs, Skip watches

The new hole was dug about four years ago when friend Luke Royes came down with his really small excavator. He was helping us remove a foot of of rock-hard pig/sheep/horse/cow manure that the previous residents had let build up in the barn. The outhouse hole was an after-thought, but I'm sure glad he was there since he dug up at least one 50 pound rock in the process.

Steve Arment showed me the square nails used in the original construction, which we used to help confirm the age of the building. The resiliency of those tamarack boards amazes me. Over 100 years old and still strong and purposeful.

New window

The framing was not as durable and much of it had to be replaced, along with the roof. Mike stayed true to the original design by making it a 2-holer. He added a hinged window for more light and air. 

The outhouse is fully functional now, sans door. Mike will add a dutch door soon. We plan to install a little plaque on the front, commemorating the centennial of the outhouse. The grass he planted in the disturbed area around the base is already sprouting and the structure looks right at home under a hackberry tree.  The views from the "throne" are beautiful. Hopefully it will still be standing in another 100 years.

Curious calves check out the new-old outhouse

From Sara at Magpie Ranch, home of Bunchgrass Beef

Pinky and the Gang

Pinky, our last year's first calf

Mike and I gathered the herd off the benches this weekend and brought them in to sort off the yearling heifers. The heifers receive a required brucellosis vaccine before they reach one year of age. The vet has to administer the vaccine, which means a trip to town this week for fifteen heifers.

Nice Red Steer

While we had the herd in, we got the opportunity to look over all the animals and to size up our butcher steers for this year's harvest. With the heifers in the corral, we let the cows spend the night in the horse pasture and gave them all a feeding of hay.  The herd looks good.

Gabe looks over some of the cows after feeding

I loved having three days on the river. The full moon cast a bright blanket across the benches and lit up the frothing water. Apricots and plums and service berry are in bloom and I saw yellow bells and buttercups while riding the benches to gather the cows. We woke up Sunday morning to thirty degree temps, so I hope the apricots don't freeze. The first day of spring brought sun, bluebirds flitting in the brush and pairs of geese gabbling in the shallows. Now we just need the weather to keep warming up and the grass to take off before calving starts.

From Sara at Magpie Ranch, home of Bunchgrass Beef

Chainsaw Work

Gabe brushing out draw to fix broken water line 

At least it was a warm day when Mike and Gabe tackled the water line after zero degree temperatures at the end of February froze and broke twenty foot of line running up to the spring. The wildfire that raged through a few years back had burned most of the brush out of the draw, but the broken water line was in a staubed-up tangle of brush and dead hackberry. That's when it's so nice to have a son around to handle the chainsaw work. 

While Gabe was at it, we cleaned up more of the dead wood in the orchard-garden. We've been pruning every year since we took over the ranch and it still needs more. I run the loppers and the hand pruners, but it is so satisfying to see a big ol' limb come off like a hunk of butter in the maw of the chain saw. I have not gotten over my sadness at the girdling of the trees by someone who put wire cages on and left them. The beautiful fruit trees grew into the wire and many were dead or dying when we started resurrecting the place. 

Cleaning the orchard

I can still remember picking nectarines and peaches there more than 25 years ago. The ripe nectarines were small and scabby and incredibly sweet, with little jewels of nectar that had oozed from tiny cracks and hardened like sap on the outer skin. Wasps lilted around us in the languid air, and when all the fruit was gone, we shed the stickiness and dust from our skin with a dip in the swimming hole before driving back to town. Now moldered stumps cast a faint shadow in the dry horsetail patch where the nectarines once stood. 

In spite of all those years of neglect, the apricot trees are enormous and healthy, raising plump purple-tinged buds into the crisp air of a March evening. I'm crossing my fingers we'll be picking luscious golden apricots come July, but I know that gift arrives only perhaps one year out of four, so we'll see if the fruit sets this year, or if a late frost will nip the trees along the river. 

It won't be long before the cows begin to calve and the river will be running high and fast. We're still fetching little bunches back every week from where they cross to the west side of the canyon. Let's hope the mother cows are all on the east bench when they start to drop their calves. Once the river rises, it's a slow trail around to the bridge to bring them home. 

At the ford upriver

Driving back to the valley yesterday, Mike caught the sunset over the Wallowas. Another storm just blew through and now it's thawing again. It's a special part of the world that can give us the early green of canyon spring and the bold sunset of the snow covered valley all in the same day. 

From Sara at Magpie Ranch, home of Bunchgrass Beef.

Winter Herding and Smashed Fingers

Return of Winter as March arrives

February seems to have blown by in a series of storms. Some left us wet and muddy. Others brought sharp cold, the benches bright with winter sun. Greys and browns returned to dominate the landscape. Buds went dormant on the trees. It felt like the sap had sucked back underground, and the memory of buttercups in January seemed incredulous.

Mike got the calves through weaning in good shape. High winds, icy roads and mud made tricky hauling for a few loads of hay headed to the river from our barn on Prairie Creek. He worried about wet corrals, but the ground dried out enough between storms to get us through.

Looking across to Haas Ridge

We're still dealing with open fences across the river, which means we have to gather stragglers every week and bring them home. When the temps warm up, the grass perks up and suddenly the birds are singing again and spring seems possible.

Down road off Pack Saddle

It's been a yo-yo kind of winter in the canyons. Cold. Warm. Wet. Dry. Frozen. Thawed. Ice. Mud. Not so unusual, except for the fluctuation. Sixty degrees in January and below zero at end of February.

It's helped a lot to have Zeke around to heft loads of hay and Gabe has been coming down to help with the outhouse project and the ever-present fence jobs. And now Dawson wants to get involved.

Fence stretcher

The day we put the new gate in on the Hall place, Dawson marched over to the fenceline. He put his hands on his hips, looked over the half crib and said, "You guys need some help?" After he messed with the fence stretcher for a while, he switched to a hammer. He had a great two-hand swing. Unfortunately he tried out a one-hand swing and landed the hammer head square on the nail of his other pointer finger.Ow.

Two-hand hammer

After the tears a band-aid felt good

As his dad said, "Just in time for the trip to the beach." Luckily by the time they left a few days later, pointer finger was back on duty. 

From Sara at Magpie Ranch home of Bunchgrass Beef

Weaning and Fishing

Crossing back to the home place

 It's been a bit of a challenge keeping the cattle where they are supposed to be. About once a week they cross the river below Packsaddle where the fences have been cut to provide easy access to fishing on the neighbor's property upriver. I've heard the neighbor eventually wants to build a pole fence, but for now it seems having cattle wander over is less of a concern than needing to open a gate to get to the fishing hole. So when the cattle wander, we gather them up and head them down river and back across to the east side.

It would definitely be easier for us if the fence were up, but we try to be flexible. Last week when Mike crossed the herd he saw fresh beaver sign. I wonder where the beavers are building. I'm going to keep an eye out for the new lodge. I'd love to be able to watch them doing their handy work.

Beaver sign

Beaver balancing act

Gabe lands a steelhead

While climbing around a rim on his trek back home, Mike caught sight of Gabe and Luke, with Dawson and James in tow, fishing at one of the holes above the house. Gabe was just landing a steelhead.

A few days later when the weather warmed up again, Mike and Gabe gathered the herd and sorted off the 2010 calves. It's weaning time and Mike will be staying on the river feeding the calves for the next month. While the herd was in the corral, he put small bunches into the alley and "groomed" them by pulling burrs and cutting off wads of cockle burr with his pocket knife. Not only does this remove the irritating seeds, it helps prevent the spread of weeds.

Weaning day  - a nice afternoon in January 

Steers ready for grooming

A few of the 2010 calves at weaning

Mike's not big on fishing, but while he's down there feeding the calves, I hope Gabe gets him out for a few lessons. Those fresh steelhead are pretty darn tasty. 

From Sara at Magpie Ranch, home of Bunchgrass Beef

Evidence

Dropping salt on the way to Magpie

It’s definitely a good feeling, knowing the cows are on the home place. Yes we still have to herd and fix fence, but everything is within a day’s reach and the days are getting longer.

Down fence above Magpie

Balancing act

The herd is scattered along the bench and grading up towards the rims above the river. When we first brought them down from Pumpkin Creek, a few head trailed to the south end of the range and found a hole in the fence. Mike and Gabe packed material and spent a day repairing one of the steepest fences on the ranch, a place where it’s hard to stand up, let alone build a rock jack.

I had the cushy job of babysitting and spent the first warm day of 2011 along the river with Dawson, digging in the sand bars, collecting muck and rocks and bones, and riding the “horse tree” in the big Box Elder grove.

Over a decade since the flood, it all comes back when I see places where the river changed course, islands of alders, abandoned meanders, rafts of debris, and the enormous piles of rock and gravel sorted and left behind on the wide bar.  Recently I saw images from the terrible floods in Australia, fierce soil-thick water clawing and sucking a path across the land. I knew what that would be like, the sound alone pushing against you in a deafening roar that threatened to pull you away to your death.

Four foot deep debris raft

Infill in the old eddy, a "20 ton" bridge beam 

New Year’s Eve storm, New Year’s day flood. The only one in my lifetime, I hope. Being at the mercy of the elements gives our lives immediacy, forces us to be resourceful, a part of the place where we live and work.

At the "beach"

The rewards are great, a lazy day in January, water riffling over the shallows and smoothing out across the summer swimming hole, a green shimmer of chervil germinating under the locust trees, sap rising in the willows. 

From Sara at Magpie Ranch, home of Bunchgrass Beef