Mirror KB Ranch Tales of the Twin Wranglers   April 2009

April 30, 2009

Our pastures may be beginnin' to green-up with spring grass, but last Friday, the 24th, the landscape was once again blanketed in white, under four to five inches of fresh snow.  It didn't last long, in fact it was mostly melted off by the next mornin'. Three days later snow fell once again, but this time it melted pert near as soon as it hit the ground. That night it snowed a tad bit more so that the next mornin' we had a new skiff of white on the ground.

Last week we decided to move our chicks into their new chicken house - the old horse stall that we'd converted to a chicken house. All went well for a couple of days then one mornin' we found the chicks massacred.  Some ornery critter - which we're more'n darn sure was one of our neighbor's dogs - had managed to get to our helpless chicks. A good number of the chicks were missin' an' the rest we found dead on the straw floor.

Sage solemnly checked each dead chick while we commiserated over our loss. Sage continued her quest as we began to busy ourselves collectin' the feeders an' the water pans, an' then took down the heat lamps.  As we prepared to bury the dead chicks there came a commotion from the chicken coop. From their hiddin' place, Sage had flushed out three survivin' chicks - two Ancona an' one Gold Sex Link! We knew Sage wouldn't intentionally kill 'em but were worried that she'd hurt 'em by accident so called her off, an' hastily captured 'em.

Once we'd caught the chicks we placed 'em back in an old pasture water tank once again an' put 'em back under a heat lamp in the cabin. The three were very subdued from the frightful attack, but they were alive! For now we'll keep 'em in the cabin 'til we can sufficiently fix the chicken coop so that it will better deter any more maraudin' dogs.

The remainder of this past week we've kept busy, fillin' badger holes in the pump-house pasture an' then created a couple new Montana "fishing" designs for our line of casual wear an' gift items. We also drove over to Kalispell to purchase pasture seed, a few fence posts, an' a small four foot gate.

While in the big town of Kalispell we looked at new models of ATVs.  The past two years our old Bayou Kawasaki has been as stubborn to kick into action as it is to talk a lazy burro into leavin' the shade of a tree.  We  looked at the Sportsman 400 Polaris an' also the 350 Yamaha Grizzly. We wanted to check out others but needed to get back to the ranch.

Yesterday we drove back into Kalispell. Our first stop was at Big John Chainsaws where we bought ourselves another Stihl Chainsaw...another small saw to match one we already have so that both of us will have a small saw to cut fence rails up on the west ridge.  Then we drove over an' checked out the 420 Honda Rancher.  It was a nice machine, but only had it in a bright red or would be able to give us the same machine in camo if we'd be willin' to wait 'till 5:30 pm to pick it up. 

Figurin' that we might end up goin' back to get the red Honda Rancher we drove back over to look at the Sportsman 400 Polaris...an' ended up purchasin' a forest green model. Not bein' all too savvy with anything that doesn't burn hay, we'll just have to hope that the machine we settled on is the right one for our needs. 

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April 21, 2009

Winter is finally on the run an' it's green-up time once again.  We've been busier 'n an ol' cow tryin' to rub off her winter coat on a fence post an' that leads us to what we've been doin' the past week or so. Not the rubbin' our hair on a fence post bit, but repairin' fences that had gone down durin' the winter from the heavy elk traffic through the ranch. We've repaired two gaps in fence lines in the east pasture so far, but with thoughts trailin' toward forkin' a horse, yesterday we worked at fixin' up the small horse trainin' pen. Hopefully we'll soon have time to get to work on a few of the green-broke ranch horses.

More pasture fences still need our attention, which we'll eventually get to by n' by. Yesterday pert near all the cows climbed through a section of fence to gain access to the east pasture. We ignored 'em since we figured that they'd climb back through the fence by late evenin' so's to head to their usual beddin' ground...but they didn't, an' Lady the big old Hererford cow was a tad bit put out that her calf had chosen to bed down with the group of defectors rather than rejoin her.

It was long 'bout 1:00 am when we came to the conclusion that with Lady bellowin' for her calf all night, gettin' any quality shut eye was as likely for us as us winnin' the sweepstakes.  Makin' a logical decision, we rolled out of bed, pulled on our jeans, slipped into our jackets an' boots an' trekked out into the dark starry night to round up the cows. We found 'em bedded down up near the large horse breakin' corral, but as we approached - our flashlights bouncin' 'round like a pair of disconnected wanderin' eyeballs - the small herd of cows bolted to their feet an' stampeded into the blackness of the night.

Knowin' that they wouldn't go far we left 'em to nervously mill 'round while we headed off to open the gate between the east an' north pasture, then carefully we circled 'round the herd an' eased 'em toward the fence. Our year old English Shepherd pup, "MKB Laramie Rimrock Sage", is really beginnin' to get the hang of herdin' cows. She still makes a fair number of mistakes, but she's quick to come when we call her so that we can position her on the herd in a way that will usually have a favorable outcome. Last night she did a bang-up job an' even seemed to understand when to push aggressively toward stubborn older cows, an' when to calm down to move the younger jumpy stock in a quiet manner.

Today we went out to find the section of fence where the cows had crawled through an' did a fair amount of repair. We'd found that the elk had taken out two fence posts an' pert near leveled a whole section of fence so it was obvious to us now that last night we could have easily pushed the cows north through the open fence line rather than mess 'round herdin' 'em west through the gate that we'd taken the time to open.

We really haven't spent this past month just fixin' fences. In fat we've spent a fair bit of time on a few smaller projects for which we enlisted the help of visitin' kinfolk from Seattle, Washington. While Gordon helped dad sort through an' clean out the house storage room us Twin Wranglers kept the two boys busy.

The first day after their arrival, the two of us split firewood, while we had the boys climb up on the roof of the bull's shed to tighten down loose panels of the metal roof. Our second order of business was to get the boys to help us convert one of the old horse stalls into a chicken house for our growin' chicks. Usin' several beat up - hay combo grain feeders, we all worked will drill an' screws to fasten the feeders at varying heights to the stall walls then filled 'em with straw for future nest boxes.

Once we got the work projects out of the way, the boys played in the hay barn a fair amount of time - jumpin' off the hay stack into a soft landin' of piled loose hay. One day Linda, the boys, an' us  took a jeep ride 'long one of the still snow covered forest roads to have a remote picnic of sorts.  Thirteen year old Tim drove the jeep out to our picnic sight, then eleven year old Jon took the wheel so's to chauffeur us all back to the ranch. 

We spent a good deal of our time sightin' down rifle barrels with the boys, shootin' the 22 rifles at targets down in the north cow pasture.  One day Gordon an' Tim accompanied us in a jeep ride out the forest road to do a bit of skeet shootin' with the 410.  We're not too shabby with the 22 rifles but we've go to admit that we're a might sorry when it comes to throwin' lead at a flyin' object, but Tim sure has a good eye for it. Reckon if survivin'  ever comes down to shootin' birds on the fly we'll go hungry 'less Tim does the bird huntin' for us. Poor Gordon rarely got a chance to pull the trigger on the 410, as he seems to be the only one that can launch the disks with our - not so nifty, manual hand launcher. Think we're goin' to have to invest in a mechanical disk launcher.

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April 5, 2009