First Week in the Basin

5/21/2009
The Big Horn Basin, Wyoming is awesome. Despite the facts that my nose is incredibly sunburnt, I only have phone service when I sit like a dummy at the end of the ranch driveway, and I have never cursed dirt so much in my life…this place is awesome. (Not to say that I would really like the winter conditions here, but it could be doable.)

I have worked my first four days, but it seems like so much longer. This week I have done a lot of irrigation stuff, gated pipe, pivot, and wheel lines. I got to corrugate the corner of a field that was not reached by the pivot. By the way, corrugating is basically plowing up small lines along the slop of a field so gated pipes can be used to irrigate the land. Gated pipes being PVC pipes with rectangular holes cut in one side that release water. Corrugating is not as boring as some other tractor work, but you can see when you don’t get your lines straight with the corrugators. I also learned how the pivots work, their timers, operation, and how all the pumps work. There is a lot more to irrigating than I thought. I have a feeling that by the end of the summer I am really going to have a new appreciation for all of the rain that we get back in Arkansas.

I still am not use to it being light at 5 in the morning and 9 at night in May, it takes some getting used to. But I think I might be starting to like the cool mornings around 40, but I do miss the heavy dew that goes along with the humidity. I will really like to cool mornings just in time to make it back to Oklahoma for the 100 degree days.

Last night all the interns got together and investigated Hyattville. We went to the restaurant where they have pizza nights on Wednesdays. The special was shrimp and spinach, never tried that before. I opted for just the combo pizza with my meats, black olives, and mushrooms, much more appetizing. Then we scooted along to the bar that is next door where there was a mean game of cards in progress. Can’t remember the name of the game they were playing, but I had never heard of it. The people here are awesome, and pegged me from being from the South. Do I really stand out that bad? There is an intern from England who has been here since February. She is awesome and funny. She said she just wants to sit and listen to me talk? Weird or cool? I don’t know yet. Haha. So yeah, we covered the massive town of Hyattville and did all there restaurant/bar hopping there is to do.

Today I met my new love in trucks, 2008 F-550. I took a few cows and calves to the sale barn that was an hour away and that truck is gonna spoil me rotten. It was like I wasn’t even pulling a trailer. I thought it was really weird that they didn’t send me to town till 12:30ish, and the sale started at 11, and was almost over by the time that I got there. You think they would figure out that the calves should be at the barn before the sale starts, oh well I aint gonna complain. But it was pretty nice to drive up to the barn and see that all the cattle there were black. Well, it wasn’t really a barn. They had a shed for the auction ring and offices. But all the pens were uncovered. Guess that’s doable when there isn’t much rain and no humidity for the cattle to get over heated. Oh and, Worland, Wyoming is an amazing town to travel if you are towing around a stock trailer. All the intersections were plenty easy to turn in, there was parking along all of the streets, and the parking lots were all big and open for me to turn around a trailer. Wish the towns back home were spread out like that. You are lucky to get to pull a trailer to many if any intersections in most towns that size back home. Oh and, I had to stop by the tire shop and napa store while I was there, and had McD’s.

Well, tomorrow is my day off. I hate having to take days off, and they just happen to be working a herd of cattle tomorrow deadgumit. I still can’t adjust to the fact that I can have a day with no work and still have trouble finding things to do. But I would much rather take a day off than work 7 12’s every week, that would just be no fun. I am going back to Worland with the girl from England, she just happens to have the same day off and thought it would be fun to hitch a ride together since we both have to go to town for groceries. Well, I gotta get to my dishes. I am half way finished with Grapes of Wrath, I really should have read it in high school when it was assigned. Night!