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

Home Economy

Roasted prime rib and steak

A couple days ago, I took the leftover prime rib and steak bones out of the fridge and put them in a kettle of water  to make stock. The bones had the rich smell of the dry rub from the roasted meat. As the stock simmered on the wood cookstove, that rich smell pervaded the kitchen along with the radiant heat of the stove. 

Ready to freeze

After the stock cooled, I poured it into jars and put them on the back porch to "prefreeze" overnight before wedging it into the freezer. Beautiful stock. It will make a delectable meal some night, probably when I need a quick nourishing soup after a long cold day. 


Before Christmas, I went through the pumpkins, looking for one to bake for pie, and I was amazed that not a single pumpkin had started to rot. They were all pristine. Perfect rinds, perfect stems. It consistently amazes me that a vegetable harvested months ago, can sit around in a cardboard box all those months and still be edible. 

Perfect flesh

I know the apples in the cellar are getting softer. By the end of February, they'll be more fit for cooking than eating. But they will still be edible. 


Making stock, sorting the winter squash, eating tons of beets and carrots as they get rubberier each week,  I never thought of this as home economics.  Sometime before I started public school, home economics had morphed from the science of food preservation - like how to can venison, to the consumption of preserved food - how to make desserts out of Jell-O and Cool Whip.  I avoided home-ec.

Trio

Kentucky farmer and author, Wendell Berry got me thinking differently about the economics of maintaining a household. He writes about what it feels like to be responsible from start to finish, for something made, something important and satisfying, like food. He says that when I grow pumpkins for pies, I am practicing a science and an art. He says that a home economy has spiritual value, that it provides the means of life and the longevity of nature and culture.  Count me in.


From Sara at Magpie Ranch, home of Bunchgrass Beef

Ending the Year at Pumpkin Creek

Above the Rye Bench, looking north

The three of us, Mike, Zeke and I, gathered the last of the herd out of Pumpkin Creek this week and trailed them to the river.

Old rock flume at Pumpkin Creek

We gathered on foot, crossing Horse Creek on a slippery downed alder tree just below the cabin, and climbing high into Pile-Up where I’d spotted about nine head on a narrow strip of grass between the north rims.

The norths were thawed in places, with steep patches of greasy mud that stuck to my boots. I was glad for my staff. We threaded a little bunch of cattle off the narrow end of the ridge between rock outcrops and switchbacked down to the drift fence. They wanted to grade out but we managed to hold them. 

Once through the gate, they took off in a wild run crossing back into the draw and through the brush before galloping downslope all the way to the creek.

Down the Pumpkin Creek road

The next day Mike and I rode and Zeke shuttled the truck over to pick us up at the river place. Our neighbor had driven up the creek that morning to tell us where he’d spotted some cattle, and to let us know he’d already cut a few of our stragglers out of his cows and put them through the gate. Nice.

We picked up another fifteen head trailing to the river. The weather held off for the five-mile ride and the cattle trailed willingly across the bench. Almost to gate on the Rye Bench, we reached the funky drift fence at Walking Cane, with its long weak stretches, rotted material and awkward corner gates.

Trailing north

A bunch of the neighbor’s cows were scattered below on a finger of bench ground. Mike suspected our cows would go running over there as soon as they could get through the fence, so he rode ahead, off the slick side hill and onto the flat. Sure enough as soon as a big red steer found a hole, he high tailed it toward the flat with a string of cows behind him. Mike’s determination and some fancy footwork by Zip finally got the best of the steer and turned him back. When an old cow took the lead towards home, the rest of the bunch soon followed. 

Mike brings west-side stragglers across the river

Past the home place

We reached the river, met up with Zeke, unloaded supplies and turned the horses out. Mike and Zeke drove up the road to Crazy Man to gather a few steers and heifers who climbed out of the river pasture earlier in the week. They trailed the tail end of the stragglers through the driveway gate just as the snow started to fall. The temperature was dropping fast and the wind was picking up. We ate the last of the pies, swallowed some hot coffee and headed for the valley.  

Zeke drove us out to town, over the ice and snow and into a blizzard squall.  We were wedged into the front seat with the heater cranked and the familiar smell of wet dogs wafting up behind us. Mike took a swig of water and summed it up, “Well, we accomplished everything.”  It was a good way to end the year.

From Sara at Magpie Ranch, home of Bunchgrass Beef