More fencing fun!

Sunrise was quite pretty this morning. For a few brief minutes the sun's light streamed through between horizon and rapidly forming overcast. The light was fiery orange-red and added glory to everything it fell upon. The roof of the courthouse and in particular the antenna and siren thingamajigs were a captivating sight, though my camera didn't capture the best of it. Operator error no doubt.

The grain elevator was breathtaking.

This one is a bit blurry but captures a flight of pigeons getting airborne, which I thought was kinda neat.

Then it was off to work. I did the chicken stuff, then headed off to check cows and turn on water. I wanted to get that out of the way quickly because I had a slate of other stuff to do, and with a big winter storm bearing down on us I wanted to complete those tasks before getting snowed in. I needed to bring the feed truck home from the shop, drop off a tire for repair, get new bottles of oxygen and acetylene headed this way, stop by the grocery store before the panic shoppers get all the bread and milk, and several other things I'm forgetting at the moment.

Despite the threat of a winter storm, and despite a chill north wind and overcast skies, it was still quite pretty, though not as brightly spectacular as sunrise.



So, water turned on, let's quickly check cows. But of course...

Oh bother.



How to get a cow in. With sailor talk.



A quick repair...



And a final admonition...



Inspection and bitch session...



With that chore nicely completed I headed into town and got busy with some real work. I'd soon whittled my chore list down to nothing, although it was touch and go at the grocery store. It was pandemonious! I'd have shot some video but I might have myself been shot. Reminded me of the one time I accidentally went into the commissary on payday. Never. Did. That. Again.

But I survived and even got my bread and milk. Bonus!

When I headed out to the ranch driving the newly refurbished feed truck I stopped by the co-op to fill her with diesel. I was in line (storm coming!) behind a young local rancher and his top hand -- his 13 year old daughter. Put a smile on my face. Sorry about the blurriness. She was up on the back of that feed truck managing both gas and diesel loading and it clearly wasn't her first rodeo. The future definitely has a better chance than my generation has any right to expect, given the way we've hosed things up.

Yep, a top hand.

Once I got the feed truck tucked away in the shop...



It was time for one last pass through the cows. Snow was beginning to fall and there was a taste of winter storm in the air.



Cows being fine, and all of them inside the fence, it was time to go fetch my dog and head home. I wanted to be inside rather than outside when the real snow started. But as I approached the north stock tank something didn't look right. In fact it looked wrong as hell. The float was in the wrong place and the tank was running over. Shit! Why can't this stuff happen on a nice day?



It wasn't that bad of a job. The water in the tank felt warm actually, being about 30 degrees warmer than the air temperature. I was in quite a hurry to finish and get dried off and warmed up, but the cattle owners happened to roll up just as I was reaching into the water. They had arrived to feed the cows their daily ration of supplemental protein/energy cubes. Well, I had to go into "no big deal, I do this all the time" mode, so I slowed down and began shooting the shit with them. I in my shirtsleeves with arms buried in frigid water in the middle of a howling blizzard, them bundled up like Nanook and Nooknan of the North. A priceless moment. We shot the shit for a couple of minutes after I fixed the float while my glasses accumulated a layer of rime ice and I gradually lost sensation in my stinging fingers. But I put on the hard and tough show, just like it says in my contract!



Be well and enjoy the blessings of liberty.