An Easy Day......

April fools day.

All week I was looking forward to Sunday. I had it all planned out in my mind, it involved sleep, food, baking, playing with Zina (who has felt neglected and alone all week), and maybe some fishing with the grand kids on Meadow Creek. A down right easy day, every girls dream.

You would think that after all the things that never go as planned that I would just give up planning and day dreaming and just go with the flow, but I hate not having a plan and know what I am doing ahead of time. I guess you could say that I like to be in control of my life, but I am in control of NOTHING out here.

Do they see me?

This week Clay was determined to get the cows off of Willow Creek, you see this time of the year the cows would rather lay on a fence and look at the green grass growing on the other side rather than have to go out and fend for themselves on the mountain. Cows can be down right stupid at times, and since these are the cows that have mastered the art of going nowhere you could say that they are the 'most stupid' of them all. First they get themselves stole by a buffalo that we now call 'Mr. Persistant', and Roger and I risk our lives on the slowest horses on the ranch to try to out run the buffalo to get the cows back. Then we get them pushed up Trail Canyon where the feed is so good that you would think they would stay for at least a day or two, but oh no. It just happened to snow around 10 inches, so the cows go out Trail Canyon and march in a perfect line back down Bull Canyon and V Canyon make a right turn and are back on Willow Creek within 6 hours. Now I am here to tell you that even on a good day, you can't move a cow with a new calf anywhere in 6 hours but those cows can make a new calf move right along as long as they are going where they are not suppose to be!!

The fellow from the DWR comes by and tells us that the wonderful horn hunters have opened all the gates going into Meadow Creek and Willow Creek and there are around 200 cows down there, and he wasn't kidding a bit, there were. Roger and I go to fetch them and push them back up V Canyon on the 4 wheeler, it was a cold day but we would be done in just a few hours so we don't take your winter clothes with us. Well we didn't get home until around 9 pm and thought that we were about to the point of frost bite. Then came the next day.

The Grumble boys!

We had waited a couple of days for all the cows to get back on the creek and decide to try it all over again from the bottom of Main Canyon, but this time Jay is going to help us. Jay, who hasn't rode a horse since Little Buck tried to kill him over a year and a half ago, is going to help us move the cows back up Main Canyon just a few short miles or so, it really depends on how many times you have to go back to get them started over again and how many times you have to go from side to side in the canyon to keep them from going back. In other words, it would turn out to be a 15 to 20 mile ride on a very out of condition body, of course Roger and I always show all kinds of sympathy for such a person. Jay wanted to turn around at the first fence line but I said, 'I don't think so, your going to the end of the road with us.' We left the creek around 9 am and got back to the creek about 8 pm, and it was cold all day long but on the way back it was about to hit the freezing point. Roger was not happy with me for not giving up, but Jay was so much farther beyond the not happy point. I am very proud of the fact that the cows we have been trying for almost a month to get off the creek have finally made it back to Crows Roost with calves following closely behind. I know that Jay had a very hard time crawling out of bed the next morning, but being saddle sore is nothing like giving childbirth so I don't know what all the complaining was about from both of them.

Jay and I

Saturday was a pretty easy day, Roger and I went back down the canyon and let the cows the needed to head back to the creek and get the stragglers up to Crows Roost. Pumped water for the cows and just spent a nice relaxing day recuperating.

Sunday finally gets here. I am laying in bed hoping that Roger will take the initiative to feed Zina, then maybe he will feed by himself. I am laying in bed just minding my own business not bossing anyone around and just relaxing and snoozing. Roger comes running in the house yelling 'GET OUT HERE AND HELP ME!!!!', so much for relaxing. There really isn't anything that puts me in a bad mood than noise in the morning, and I would put yelling in the noise category. I ever so calmly walk out to see if he was missing a body part or bleeding, he was standing in the door way, so I said 'what do you want?' He replies, 'come help me pull this calf'. Now I know that Clay is out here and is much better at this task than I am so I say, 'did you yell at Clay to come help you?' Of course he said 'no, why would I do that'. I said, 'so you might live long enough to see tomorrow!'

I have had no coffee, been rudely awaken, and yelled at. I am thinking that Roger has just blown my relaxing day all to heck, but I put on my sexy calf pulling attire and go to the corral. I get the calf puller and tell Roger to get to pulling, and guess who shows up - Clay. Rogers relaxing day just fell off the cliff for sure now. After the calf was pulled, two of the heifers tried to wade across the swamp and managed to get stuck in the middle, then we ended up pulling three more calves. We had the grand kids for the day, so we would send them back to the house, or just have them sit on the bank to wait for us to handle the emergency at hand and then go get them again. Just another day at Main Canyon. Little William said tonight, 'those stupid cows.' He is only 2 and has it figured out.

Madi is catching frogs.

William sitting on the bank waiting for grandma and grandpa.