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Home Sweet Home
It snowed, snowed, and then snowed some more.

Sunday, May 27, 2012

No Hat Is Safe

Not my best picture!
I know that we live in a desert and in the desert you have dust storms, but when you add a herd of 200 cows in front of you walking into the wind, it is like riding in a hurricane of dirt. Then to top it off, I thought it finally had started to sprinkle a little bit, by the time I figured out that it was 'just' the cow pee blowing back on our dirt covered faces another hurricane gust hit and ripped my hat off and it landed in a green grass fresh cow patty!!! Can you say "NOT HAPPY AT ALL"!!!

Paulino started to laugh and that was when his hat lifted up and flew away, it landed somewhere in the sage brush. It took him a good 20 minutes to find it!!! Roger had his hat tied on with a piece of twine, he look completely ridiculous but he still had a hat that was in one piece at the end of the day.

After the cleaning.
This was our Friday, we got up early to beat the storm that never showed up. Got to Meadow Creek around 8 am gathered up the newly branded calves and their moms and started them up Kelly Canyon. This was our 2nd bunch and they weren't to excited about moving to the mountain like the 1st bunch was. The 1st bunch left on their own and we only had to push around 35 out the next day, these 35 were included in the 2nd bunch because they had come back to the meadow so they could load up on the green grass again, which is the ingredient for the green grass patties or better yet the green grass squirts - you never want to be hit with the squirts. Ok, now that we have covered that, on with the story.

The grasshoppers have beat the cows to the grass in the bottom of the canyons, which mean the cow have to go up on top. So we headed for Little Jim, this is the canyon that I had met some bears in last summer so I took my faithful Buddy, Roger and Pauleno were on their own because I took the front 75 or so up ahead and left them with the 'slow' cows. I knew that the trail had been washed out and it was going to be difficult getting them to climb up the canyon, they didn't let me down, I wasn't aware that cows don't really care to make new trails until we came to the washed out part of the canyon but I am fully aware of it now - you learn something new daily.

By the time I had gotten my herd up the canyon, I had yelled and screamed so much that my voice was gone. I am sure that all the dirt that had been forced down my throat by the wind didn't help matters any at all either, but I then realized that I had left my water in Rogers saddle bag. Not a problem I would just dig down in one of the springs until fresh clear water comes out and get a drink, then I would zip back down and help the guys get their cows over the ponderosa tree that is laying across the trail.... so I started to mine for water, it worked, I found fresh - clear water. Now I know that when it flooded last summer it put around 2 feet of loose dirt over the springs, but I needed a drink. I stepped up to the spring and sunk up to my knees in mud, there went the clear water. See I learned another thing, you should always remember how deep the dirt was after the flash flood because if don't you will end up with a couple of boots filled with very cold muddy water.

After this experiment was complete I figured that I would just go find Roger and my water. You would never believe where I found the guys, they were off of their horses mining. Roger was digging down to find the fresh clear water, then Pauleno stepped in to get a drink and down he went. Now I don't care who you are, this was funny, I guess it only takes one woman to find water and very cold muddy water filled boots and it take two men to make it funny!!! Roger wanted to know why I didn't warn them, I told him that would have if I could talk. They had drank my water, and theirs, which did not make it funny for very long.

It took us about another 2 hours to get the rest of the cows to climb over the downed tree and up the hill. None of us had really bothered to look at the other, because when we arrived at the truck, Sandra busted out laughing. Our faces looked like a wind shield that was covered with dust and a few sprinkles of water had landed on it. I am going to post the pictures, and this is a hard decision for me, but for my followers I will show you how dirty this job can be!! Even after the cleaning, your brows, ears and noses were still covered with dirt.

Roger and I went back the next morning to make sure that the cows didn't come back, and there were 35 cows with their calves and 2 lazy bulls that came back with them. So we pushed them out on foot in the wind....again.

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