All Aboard

A book about Jim's grandmother, Marjorie Reed, was recently published and can be purchased on Amazon. She was a famous western artist, with quite an interesting life. Her paintings are both incredibly beautiful and capture the essence of early western living in a vivid way. She did a series on the missions of California, which was also published in book form. She traveled all over the western United States and even lived with the Bedouins in Israel for a time. She also lived on the Salmon River in Siskiyou County when she was married to a miner. Quite a lady!

Fair Recovery

We're done with 2nd crop and the fair and gearing up for school to start. Not much of a break this year. The fair went pretty well, although lamb prices were very low. People just don't seem to like lamb around here (after all it is beef country.) We're hoping to promote lamb at the fair next year by having a food booth. Well-prepared lamb can be quite delicious! There is some encouraging news that the dairies are starting to buy some hay, so maybe things will start to break loose and we'll live to fight another day. Or ranch. Whatever.

Jim and I saw an interesting documentary about farming practices in America called "Food, Inc." While it is anti-corporate farming, there were some very timely issues raised about our industry. The movie is based largely on Michael Pollan's book, "The Omnivore's Dilemma", which we had read. I think it is worth checking out for those in the agricultural community, if for no other reason than to raise our awareness of how we are perceived.

Well, we started cutting and wouldn't you know it we get hit with a very intense thunder storm... the first in weeks. Apparently it just rained on parts of the eastside. Jim is researching getting parts for the burned out 4-wheeler, as insurance does not cover it. The Hoyt report shows hay prices have "hit bottom" and should start to climb :), so let's hope that's true. Life is pretty quiet right now, which is kind of nice.

Happy Ranching!

Getting Started

We're experimenting with getting our website going and apparently a blog is supposed to be part of it. So what do ranchers blog about? It's hard for me to imagine that anyone would be interested in such things, but perhaps I'm wrong. After all, we pore over old journals to understand life from years ago, so perhaps this is the equivalent. (Will people pore over old blogs in the future? Scary thought). And realistically, I don't think anyone will ever read this so it probably doesn't matter.

Well today is another scorcher and it's only supposed to get hotter. The swather is broke down, hay isn't selling, one of the 4- wheelers literally burst into flames last week (while Jim was on it, no less), the squeeze is not functioning and it looks like the wheat may not make it in this unrelenting heat. Just another day in paradise. The good news is the cows are happily out on the range, which means anything you need to do until the cows come home, you now have approximately 3 1/2 months to complete.

We're getting ready to start cutting 2nd crop (provided the swather gets fixed), and got a tremendous yield on first. I did see two loaded hay trucks leaving the valley today, so maybe things will start to move :)!

Until next time,

Happy Ranching!

Don't forget the Old Time Rodeo in Etna this Saturday (July 25). Ben took the above photo at the May Rodeo last year.