How'd it go today?

We dont get much rain, so that helps making hay.

My father in law gets three times the rain we get, 30 plus inches a year. He has to wrap everything and make baleage.

So of the best hay in the US comes out of the desert southwest. Just as green as the day they cut it.

The blizzard has quit, but now the fog has rolled in. Some of my cows were headed to town, got them turned around.

I guess they were sick of country living, cant say I blame them much.
 
I don't know about you place there in the photo, Jim. It looks like that if you walked out far enough, you might fall off the edge of the earth.
 
With the snow and fog today it sure seemed like it!

I remember feeding one winter with my old IH tractor. It was snowy and foggy and I got completly disoriented. There was no sage brush or tall grass or fences where I was. It was like being locked in a completly white room. It felt like I was levitating in a cloud. Could not even seen the tracks my tires made.
 
Now the wind has dropped a bit it's on to the casuarinas.
Almost two years since I last did them and they've been through three hurricanes and don't look half bad. Easy peasy now, 150t and cut them back to the same spot (almost) where I cut them before. I've done them every year for five years before this.
This is the closest I get to topping, drop crotching to small laterals, way under 1/3, it's the only way to keep casuarinas under control so they provide screening and windbreak without the getting so tall they fall over or send huge branches crashing down in a hurricane.
They are not native to here (Bermuda) and will keep growing straight up until they get cut or a storm takes them out.
 
With the snow and fog today it sure seemed like it!

I remember feeding one winter with my old IH tractor. It was snowy and foggy and I got completly disoriented. There was no sage brush or tall grass or fences where I was. It was like being locked in a completly white room. It felt like I was levitating in a cloud. Could not even seen the tracks my tires made.
I can relate Jim. Being in the Gulf on a white-out foggy day when you can barely see past the bow of your boat can be pretty spooky too. Without navigation gear, I'd be pretty helpless. You've got to admire the old time mariners.
 
Stig, the tack there and most of our tack is custom made by a local 3rd generation cowboy. He also is who I take riding lessons from one day a week. It's been a real honor, and I'm learning a lot. Good luck on your bid.

Had a great ride today. Would love to ride down and rustle some cattle for yah Jim.
 
Jim, am I right in thinking that stock has a slightly rough texture as opposed to being very smooth. That seem like it would feel good with the texture.

Thats right Jay. I looked at it closely, and the stock is very slightly rough. The black paint (I guess that what it is) is kind of splattered on and gives a raised surface for gripping. Not quite as grippy as checkering, but still quite functional. I dont think you can checker these style of stocks, they do have molded in checkering, but it looks bad and is not sharp.

Stippling and molded in grip panels are good.
 
Spring was well on it's way here, fruit trees blooming and all.
This morning I woke up to 4" of snow. Broke each and every one of my 1001 daffodils, bummer.
We have some 8000 noble fir to plant, not much fun doing that in snow and icy rain.
I sure hope the weather changes before next week. We are going to Sweden all week, helping a buddy on a fencing project ( About 100 km fenceline).
We'll be staying in an old hunting camp, so if the weather is good, it'll be a little like a vacation.
Hard work, but in the afternoon, kick back in camp and enjoy the view over the lake.
I've been looking forward to this, but if the weather stays like this, I'd rather not go.
 
Game reserve, so I can't bring the dogs.
For some reason hunters in Sweden ( Or here, for that matter) don't believe you can train a dog not to chase deer.

My last Thais ( Not the present one) was stepped on by a deer when we used him as road block and didn't even stand up.
Just because the hunters can't train their dogs, they believe no-one else can either.
 
No, a place where they raise deer and elk and let hunters with fat purses come in and shoot them, while trying to forget that they are "hunting" behind a fence.

We used to have them around the castles here as well, but the tradition is dying out.
Good riddance, if I may say so.

I should have used the word " hunting ranch" I think.

Jim, we have plenty of hunters here, but since they only go for the big bucks, and the roe deer has no natural enemies ( Wolves, bobcats etc having been shot to extiction) we have population crashes all over.
Doesn't take a "no hunting" stand for that to happen, just a lack of natural predators and a bunch of hunters more concerned with hanging a set of antlers on the wall than hunting for meat.
 
Yes!
You have to pay the land owner for a hunting license.
with the huge amount of hunters here 176000 out of a 6 million population, and not much land, the price at present is somewhere around $50/acre.
Most leases run for 10 years or more.
Ther are hunters who go for meat, but trophy hunting gets bigger and bigger as more big city people turn to hunting.

Then there are the big estates that breed and release bird by the million for shoots.
$50 to kill a pheasant or fire 3 shots at it, and then they bury them in a ditch, dug with a back hoe, beacause they can't sell that many birds.
Major industry.
Major sickness IMO.
Bunch of fat, middle age office drones trying to regain their lost manhood by commiting mass murder on semi tame phesants and mallards.

I have not a single kind word to say about the way hunting is done, here.
I hope from the bottom of my heart that we eventually go the way of Holland and Belgium and simply outlaw it.
 
Jim, I know that.
Was a cowhand in Idaho in 81/2 and used to hunt there, too.
That probably marks me as the only vegetarian hunter, EVER!

Some things aren't very pinko here, but leftovers from a time when "nobility", king and church ruled.

The " nobility" has been bancrupted, the royalty is turning themselves into a joke and the church is losing members like a barrel full of bullet holes is losing water.

We'll get there eventually.
 
Thats one thing we did not have to deal with for very long, Nobility and King.

There is really a big portion of the US that hunts. They do it for a lot of reasons. There was some commercial hunting years ago, but that is gone now. Well, there are still game ranches in TX, and some private ground is leased up, but by and large the American citizen can still go and hunt, pretty cheaply too. You can buy a hunting rifle with a scope for 350 bucks, new, now.

I think its a good tradition, one worth fighting for, and one that should be safe for the foreseeable future. Rant over!
 
We got rained out today after our first job, a Norway Maple takedown in a small backyard. Now, I'm sitting here editing photos from work to get stuff ready to update the company website and Facebook page for my boss after our meeting this afternoon.
 
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