At least about work and life in Wyoming. I am wrapping up my third week here in Wyoming and it is Awesome. It has rained for the last 4 days, about 1.75 inches. That is a lot of rain considering the annual total for this area in only 8 inches including snowfall. There is a lot of bentonite in the soil here and it gets very slick when it gets a little bit wet. So I kinda got a Toyota Tacoma stuck on flat ground, but we got out, it was just a fun ride for a little while.
This week has been packed full of things. Last Friday I made a quick trip with Katy Jane to Worland for groceries (quick meaning 3 hours) and some Subway. Restaurant food has a different meaning when you only have one chance a week to eat it. Then we took a five hour ride into the mountains. It is B..E..A..utiful up there. We rode up so far that our water bottles had dented in when we got back because of the lower pressure on the mountain. It was a great day to ride and the landscape in the mountains is pretty neat. We were up high enough that we could feel it getting cooler as we rode up. Today we are going to take a little longer ride up a canyon that follows a river up the mountains.
All of my days running together because the only way to tell my days apart is what we are eating. Ha ha. All of us interns are taking turns cooking. The girls cooked last week on Monday, so this week the guys cooked. I fixed a chicken casserole and mashed potatoes that turned out pretty good and everyone cleaned up the left overs. Wednesdays are our pizza nights cause the cafe here in town has a special night for pizza. They are closed right now because of a small fire in the kitchen, so we drove another small town about 30 minutes away and had pizza there. And I of course can tell my Fridays apart because it is my day off and i get to go to Worland for Subway. Gotta have some way to tell these days apart when you work 6, 12 hour days every week.
I got to haul 5 bulls that went bad to the sale barn at Worland on Wednesday. It is an hour drive one way, but I really don't mind it at all. I am still getting to drive that Ford 550. I am pretty sure that I am going to get spoiled to that thing and not want to drive the 350 when I get back home. I also got to do a lot of tractor work last weekend. I ran to roller harrow on Saturday and the seeder on Sunday. It was a Southern Rock weekend on the classic rock radio station, so I had plenty of great songs to get me down the rows. We are planting alfalfa, barely, orchard grass, and fescue for a hay crop. I was on the roller harrow again on Monday afternoon but it started raining on me, so I had to call it quits. We are still waiting on the field to dry out.
We worked 180 pair yesterday, the last herd to be worked before taking the cattle to the mountains at the beginning of July. We didn't get started until 1. I am still having to get used to the fact that there is no humidity up here and we don't have to rush to get all the cattle working done before it gets to hot to work them. We didn't finish until 8, so it was a long day. Will let me sort the cows from the calves, and I let Molly do some sorting. It is weird to see a girl working right with us in the cattle, reminds me of my mom. I got to work the chute and give shots. We have a portable hydraulic chute instead of using a manual chute. Pretty nice and much easier on the cattle and us. We just started working the calves and it started pouring rain on us. It poured for about 50 calves. I have to use a measurement of what I am working on because I really have no sense of time out here, and don't ever bother looking at my phone because it makes the day seem longer. We had to sort off 2 pair. One cow had 3 bad quarters and her calf is not getting enough milk. The other cow had 2 ruptured quarters and part of her bag was rotting. Kinda gross I know, but I felt bad for not noticing till yesterday, but it is hard to see every animal every day when they are in a herd of 350. But before I started checking them this week no one had been checking the regularly because everyone has been so busy in the irrigation and hay fields.
The new cattle manager, Ted, started this week. He is from California. He is kinda trying to get his bluff in on some of us and show us that he is all big stuff. He really comes off as sitting high on his horse. That really bugs me when people come on to a new job and immediately demand respect from everyone. You really have to earn that respect, and he isn't getting of to a good start. The Gen. Mgr is a little aggravated at it too. Hey, it might just be a job opening for me here next May.
Well I guess this is probably long enough for this week. I have to get around and get to town so I can get back and start riding. Hope you are all having a great week, and I will keep you in the know of my awesome summer here in Wyoming.
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