Summer Visitors

We’re settling into summer. The last load of cows and calves was trucked to the range this week. A few stragglers that will stay in the valley are camped on nearby pastures. The weather is warm and dry, but we had a glorious two day rain that made things look a lot brighter on the ranch.

I’m still trying to get the last of the vegetable garden in. The cool weather plants - peas, onions, radishes, and lettuce are up. “Cotton” from our cottonwoods covers the ground and it looks like we’ve had a light snowfall that refuses to melt. The two robin’s nests, one on a ladder leaning against the house, and one in the nook of the barn eve, have fledged their young.

We had visitors this week, friends of Seth he’s met on his FFA travels. Brian is an Arizona farm boy and Alicia is a city girl from Wisconsin. They rode horses, branded calves, helped doctor Birdie (our dun mare), haltered a Hereford bull, herded cattle, and toured our mountain range ground. They both liked the outdoor work and Alicia didn’t even mind the sunburn.

We took Brian to move cattle in the hills yesterday. We forgot the dogs, and thought we needed room in the trailer for a bull, so only took two horses. That left three of us, Brian, Anna, and I on foot. The herd got stymied by a bog for an hour or so, which meant some of the unmatched pairs went back to where we started. We got them moved to their destination with a little creative herding. We had lunch watching them settle on the greenest of green pastures in front of a cloud studded sky.

On the way home Brian said he had been trying to think of a similar experience that could be had by a family in the city and hadn’t come up with anything. We take it for granted I guess. Seth said, “we live with each other, we’re coworkers.” It’s the best part of our business. 

The young people are scattered out again, but we’re enjoying their photos of Idaho on Facebook.