The lazy days of fall have come to an end.

After a couple of months to take it easy and finish up some projects around the house, calving season has begun and the lazy days are over.

Madi at the controls

We started feeding hay to the cows in upper Willow Creek and the 1st calf heifers. We have spent a couple of weeks sorting the heifers out of the cows so that we can bring them to Main Canyon because you need to watch them and help them get their first little calf into the world, alive. This year Roger and I have decided that we both will get up together, ok he decided not me. I don't really have a problem with him getting up every 3 hours during the night, while I stay in bed to make sure that I stay warm and cozy! Now he is wondering if his decision was a good one, because I fall asleep on the way home from the creek and he has to get out and open the gates. I guess you can't have your cake and eat it too, especially when the cook is tired!!

The first couple of days the guys must have been out of practice from loading hay so that it will stay on the truck as it bumps over the frozen cow patties, because they had to reload to twice per load the first 3 days in a row. Since I am the driver, this can be a bit irritating, because the bales fall down on the cab with a loud bang, so I decided on the 4th day to load the hay on the truck and they could throw it up to me. Being raised out here, I have learned how to load hay so tightly together that you can actually spin your truck around on the slick ice and only have a few bales fall off, so after showing the guys up on the 5th day they have been doing much better at getting the hay on the truck. Even out here there are
the male egos to deal with and every once in a while
you just need to rough them up a bit!!

Roger and I were feeding Sunday, and we were really looking forward to a nice relaxing day laying around and napping, but no - we can't have that. As we are feeding the heifers, I was thinking that some of them were missing, like about half of them, and yep they were. They had decided that since the snow had melted and the water was running in the creek again that they would go visit the cows, maybe the cows were getting better hay on their side of the fence. So after we feed, we then go back to the corral and get the horses, load them up and go back up the creek to sort out the STUPID heifers again. We somehow managed to get all but 15 out and back on their side of the creek, then we slapped together a make shift fence on the creek bank that we were hoping would hold them until Monday when we could get a heifer tight fence built, but no - they just walked over the fence, through the creek and back in with the cows so they were sure to get the better hay on Monday morning. Tomorrow we are going down to sort them out again and haul them to Main Canyon!! I have really decided that cows are some what smart animals, but I don't know for sure at what point their brains develop because I am pretty certain that it isn't until well after they have had their first calf. Someone should do a study on this.

For those of you who are on Face Book, you know that something happened this past week. I won't go into details, but we had made a quick trip into Vernal last Friday to pick up supplies, and on our way home we came upon an accident. It has been a hard scene to forget. I would ask for all of you to say a prayer for the family of those involved. I want to thank the 5 guys that stopped to help us.