They still love their mother!
How it looks is how it feels. It feels of the West.
Babes
All the new babies are growing up quickly, entering into independence while their adult feathers spring up out of their skin. Some of you might recall I had a massacre here last May and I lost 22 laying hens (my entire flock) in one night which was the straw that broke the camel’s back! I told Robbie to bring me a Great Pyrenees puppy when he next came home from McCall and so he did and Ernest came into our lives.
Ernest has been a game changer.
We have not had a single livestock fatality or disappearance since he began patrolling at night at the age of 6 months old. He is now slightly older than a full year and he is the archangel of our farm. In the light of his bold presence on our farm we began to build our flocks again. We started 25 laying hens/roosters/bantams this spring, guinea fowl, meat birds, we have a jenny with a passel of turkleteenies (my favorite), ducks and geese. The geese stole my heart. All our critters are teetering in the awkward zone between teenager and adult but it breaks my heart a bit to see my geese growing up.
Waterfowl has started sleeping on the pond at night but when daybreak comes they are often snuggled up with Ernest on the lawn in front of our big bedroom window.
Nothing on our farm fears Ernest, it’s remarkable to watch.
I have been remiss with farm postings! I shall try to take some photos in the coming weeks — all is very alive and well here on Sundries Farm.
I’m finally getting around to sharing some of the branding images I took last spring. It’s always wonderful to be included by my friends and neighbors, to be invited out for these days that are about herd health and wellness as well as
Branding days are more than about branding. This is an opportunity for ranchers to give spring calves a wellness check, vaccinations, castrate little bulls, apply other identification in the form of ear tags and notches — remember, cattle rustling is alive and well in the West and while rustlers have figured out how to remove ear tags and change ear marks, they can’t really mess with registered brands. People ask all the time why ranchers don’t tattoo, freeze brand, or use other forms of ID instead of hot branding and I just want to simply say this: all the ranchers I personally know LOVE their livestock. If there was a more efficient and cost effective and LOW STRESS way to apply ID to free ranging cattle, ranchers everywhere would be doing it. The cows in these photos free range on over 50,000 acres of BLM lands. This isn’t a cute, irrigated, 20 acre cow farm in the midwest that can be seen from the kitchen window. These ranchers have to drive out, haul horses, and ride those horses out on to range lands to check their livestock as they are rotated between grazing allotments. Every cow lost or stolen is a few thousand dollars lost or stolen. It’s important to identify these animals and branding is one of the ways that is done.
The last thing I want to tell you is a quiet, organized, calm branding day is a pleasure to behold. It is a craft. Stalwart horses doing their jobs with strength and finesse, the soft zing of ropes and the shush of calf bellies passing through dust and silt, the smoke rising up from fur, gentle conversations passing between people, everyone knowing their job and their duty and working
Please note: I appreciate your good citizenship and your respectful treatment of my friends and neighbors when it comes to how you go about expressing your emotions, thoughts, and opinions on ranching, regenerative ranching, branding, raising meat and eating meat. I will not host bigotry in my space and I will not enter into conversations rooted in bad faith but I do look forward to respectfully responding to comments that come from individuals who express themselves thoughtfully and respectfully. Please bear this in mind if you choose to comment on this post. Thanks for popping by.
A few weeks ago we popped out for the steelhead closer on the Salmon River. It was my first time
I’ve stopped thinking about life and death
I caught my first steelhead. We watched the moonrise. We ate leftovers beside a warm fire. We slept well.