The poll is up

I'd like to thank everyone for their input this last week on possible names for this blog. I've narrowed them down to these.

Little Farm on the Prairie-The Farmer

The Hammer and the Plow-The Farmer

Scrap Iron-The Farmers Wife

One MOA shy of Crazy-Anne

Scrap Iron, Grease, and Grain-Rev. Paul

Ever Decreasing Circles-Amber

They are in no particular order and I really like them all. Thats why I'm asking you for an unbiased opinion on what I should choose. As a reader you have a better idea on the feel of this blog than I do it.

Again, thank you for your suggestions. Let the voting BEGIN!

Yes you can vote for more than one name, but try not to vote for yours more than a couple of times.

Calves shipped

A quick post as I'm tired. We got the calves sorted and the steer calves loaded on trailers headed east. It was a nice day to ship. Very little wind, and the temperature was in the fifties. Very pleasant. We had a good crew, and all went well. no injuries or damaged corrals. Although I might have torked the wife off when I mentioned That I thought she talked to much. All well, if thats all we had to fight about we're doing good. Now for some quick stats.

Heaviest batch of steer calves 98 head avg. 654#

Lightest batch 41 head avg. 601#

187 head total gross avg. weight 629#

Sale weight after 1% pencil shrink 623#

I'm not sure what the break even price should be for these calves but I think we're pretty close to it. Markets for cattle are tough right now. Its been a couple of years since we actually made a real profit on our calves, but all you really can hope for is to make enough to pay the bills, so you can keep doing what you love.

Bible study 6

I had almost forgot to talk about our last bible study and the last one of this particular Study.

This lesson was about the legacy we leave behind. It asked some pretty tough questions. Like were we satisfied with our legacies, or how has our fathers legacy affected us in good and/or bad ways. It really made you think about the life your living and how it affects the people your with.

There was also a spot where it asked us to image that God is going to write a one-sentence summary of your life similar to the one He gave us of Enoch in his word. UH.....wow, thats a tough one. If you don't know about Enoch heres the one sentence used in Gods word, "Enoch walked with God; then he was no more, because God took him away." Genesis 5:24. Lets just take that first part, "He walked with God". Thats a pretty solid statement. I'm supposed to come up with something in comparison? Thats gonna take awhile.

The study went well. Most of the guys made it. We also agreed to start a new study here in November. i don't remember the name of the study but it looked to carry on in the same lines as this one. we will be meeting once a month just like before.

Oh and the one sentence, "He took the scenic route."

Reason #42 why I live in eastern Montana

When I commute to work at 8:00 a.m., I can look out my car window and see this great view of a morning moon.

And NOT this one!!!!!

Name change

It would appear "Little farm on the Prairie" will make the vote ballot. Montana east will be dropped because of a radio program has a similar name and I would hate to get in trouble for that.

The Farmers Wife suggested, "Scrap Iron" To elaborate on that, every farm or ranch has a scrap iron pile. If you dig through them you can find all sorts of things, mostly junk,but some things with potential, and the occasional treasure. Sort of like my blog, the mostly junk part anyway.

What about, "The Hammer and the Plow"?, sounds like a name of a pub. Or communist if you lean that way.

I'm still taking suggestions until the end of the week, then I'll open up the vote.

The Twilla report

Twilla has settled in nicely into her new home. She tolerates the cats, and the other dog. She gets along well with the kids and has slept with them on a couple of occasions. She had a couple of accidents in the house, but in her defense she did try to let me know she wanted out, her signs are VERY subtle though and I've just now started to learn them. She had some separation anxiety at first, she chewed the passenger side seat belt off in the work pickup and chewed the power cords on some things in moms garage, but seems to have gotten over that. She has figured out I come back pretty quickly when I have to leave her inside when we're working cows. She's loading into the pickup very well and she even loaded into the side x side wheeler today without me lifting her in. She still doesn't care for it much, but she's trying at least. She's allowed to go out unsupervised and doesn't seem to want to wander very far, so thats excellent. All in all I'm very happy with our progress.

November 4 2009

The day started out good enough. Break the skid steer, get parts for the skid steer, fix the skid steer. Simple enough right. Yeah, right. Murphy has skills. Apparently he decided to apply those skills to my skid steer.

Broken Starter, Why did it break? Hmmm.

Engine ring gear teeth. The starter teeth mesh with these to turn the engine. They look ok.

But wait, 3/4 the way around, the teeth are missing big chunks. Thanks Murphy. I had not planed on this big of a project. To fix this right would mean pulling the engine, and thats no small deal. So I cleaned it up as best I could, put some timing marks to line too, so that the starter can engage on clean teeth. the engine mostly starts on the first half of a revolution, so in theory, the starter won't touch the damaged teeth under power. It'll have to do until I can get time to fix it right.

Back together and it actually started without grinding. Thats good.

We finally got to moving cows about 2:30 in the afternoon. I saw about 70 head of antelope while gathering the cows. We had the kids with us. Angus slept most of the time, and Maggie chattered most of the time. At one point she asked me to stop so she could take a picture of the pretty sunset. I think she meant skyline, but who cares. She's her mothers child and has a good eye for these things.

Mary's pic. This is usually all we see of cows when we trail them.

Thats a good looking woman there.

Maggie's sunset photo

Gonna get something done!

First an foremost, I need to apologize to the Miles City Fire crew. I misquoted them, its M2D camo, not W2D camo. I had WD40 on the brain or something like that.

We ship our steer calves on Saturday. So I'll spend the remainder of the week stirring cows around closer to the corrals so we can sort and ship in an expedient manner on Sat. morning. I'll be in charge of the sort at the corrals on the backside of the place. This is the same location as the infamous spousal abuse claims filed by The Farmers Wife(claims filed at the court of Pluhar family dinner table, in the presence of assorted neighbors.) In her defense I was acting poorly and said some things that were entirely uncalled for.

I use the term "corrals" rather loosely for this particular set of cattle working facilities. Any containment of cattle in said facilities is merely an illusion that one hopes and prays the cows do not test. The lumber in said facilities is so ancient and dry, that a mere glancing blow from a stray tail can cause the planks to shatter. Its a good thing we practice LOW stress cattle handling. Now if I can practice LOW stress spouse handling, I'll be set. This year there will be a couple of extra people there to help sort. This should prove to be a big bonus.

And now for something completely different,

I'm pondering a name change of the blog. I don't feel that it adequately promotes the the feel of the blog. I might try a poll or a vote to gather your opinions. I'd also welcome any suggestions. Some quick ones I'm tossing around in my head: "Stewards of the Range", "Montana East", "Little Farm on the Prairie" , " Est. 1895 " (I'll need to check the date on that one), "Farming the Dream", "Walk softly and carry a Big Cattle Prod", "A shake of the Rattle Paddle", "Wheat, Beef, and other good things to Eat". I think you catch the drift.

I had planned on posting some pics of the Blog coins I made and some of the learning process involved. But I seem to have miss placed the photos on my computer somewhere. Until I find them you can see one of them on Rev. Pual's blog. WAY UP NORTH I tried to make them personalized to the individual and their blog. I'm still working of Police Divers. Mostly I'm procrastinating about finding a laser printer so I can print some reverse images to act as resist in an acid etch process allowing me finer detail. Well I suppose I've "Shared" enough tonight. I've got more sloshing around in my head but I'll save that for another day.

W.Pluhar

Been Busy, where do I start.

Lets see. This week a couple of fire fighter friends came out from Miles City and went Antelope hunting. They managed to get one early in the afternoon. He was about a 13 incher. It was a 300 yrd. shot. He was a little to the left with his shot, but somehow manage not to hit him in the stomach, so it was a clean, and quick kill. Look for it at a M2D camo site near you. The fire fighters took video and pics and sent them to some company reps.

I managed to mail the long delayed gifts for the male blog followers. I'll post more on that later on.

The deer hunters that were here finally managed to get a decent mule deer buck Today. They spent three hours and crawled on their stomach for a 1/4 mile to get within 100 yards of him to make a clean kill. Now thats hunting.

I spent the day blading my road and making it rough as sin for the winter. Not exactly what I had in mind, but I needed to pull the shoulders in and I got a bunch of grass clumps pulled in with it. I'll have to drive on it for awhile then hit once more to clean it up.

After I got home this evening I shot the .257 Roberts for kicks. Its back to the shop with it. Its not holding true. Last week it was vertically true. Now this week its hard to the right. Couldn't be the cobble job on the mounts could it be. The other thing that has me worried is its stringing them vertically with a tall spread. Pressure on the barrel? maybe.

300 yards looks farther than it sounds.

Thats closer.

Ah.... thats better.

5 shots, 6" to the right, stringing vertical 3", 5", 7"

and the other two ?

Range 290 paces, give or take.

Wind, Less than 2mph diagonal to flight path.

Uhmmmm.... Redheads, daddy likes

What a weekend. We got to welcome in some new friends and a new family member.

Here they are driving into the yard, after a long trip from Missouri.

Introducing Twilla B.

Photo by: The Farmers Wife

This is the "ATWILLA THE HON" pose.

Photo by: The Farmers Wife

This is Don and his dog Tig. We went bird hunting on the backside of our place. This is Tig's and Don's first Hungarian Partridge. Don was using a old Belgian made 16 ga. side by side and #4 shot.

Tig getting to smell up some Sharptail grouse.

Don posing with some sharpies and his trusty double barrel.

The bird hunting happened on Sunday. Today was Monday and it was busy. As I understand Don and his wife Shelly left about 10 in the morning to continue their trek around the country before heading home later this week. I didn't get to give them a proper send as I left at 7 a.m. to be a neighbors place, to help them ship their calves today. It started to rain about 8 a.m. and hasn't let up. We were all pretty wet by the time the trucks got to the ranch at 11 a.m. . There was some concern if the trucks would be able to get back out on the muddy roads after loading with calves. I left before the trucks, but I haven't heard otherwise so I'll assume the trucks made it out.

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It was trying to snow this evening but I think its going to warm up and stick with the rain until tomorrow some time. I got home early so I took advantage of the break and did some sorting for storing type of busy work. Police Diver has been sharing his passion of collecting postal covers and cancellations with us. He does mostly Naval covers but he has got into other events dealing with postal covers. He has sent us a enormous amount of covers and I can't tel you how cool they really are. I love the artwork in the stamps, and the stories behind some of the covers. There has to be some wonderful stories that go along with the origins of the covers.

They deserve a proper storage spot that allows for show and tell and safe keeping. Mt wife had a great idea about using photo storage boxes. They have dividers and are archival in quality so they shouldn't damage the covers.

I sorted first by Naval, State, or otherwise. The sub sorted between surface,sub surface, commissioned or decommissioned, special event, or special date"anniversaries", or similar. It took awhile but I like the way it turned out.

Putting in some standard naval covers.

He even sent one from Montana this year. The Garfield County Fair will have its one hundred year anniversary in a few years, I wonder what it take to have a cover and cancellation approved through the USPS. I need to check into that.

*************

A rough tally of the game harvested from our place so far this year goes something like this, 15 antelope, 3 geese, 2 ducks, 6 Hungarian partridge, and 4 sharptail partridge. There's probably still 50-60 head of antelope and numerous deer on our property. We try to manage our hunters to the quantity of the game. We want our hunters to be able to have a good hunt, without tripping over other hunters, and this also provides a buffer for the antelope. There are places they can go in our boundaries and receive little to no hunting pressure for a few days at a time. Don made mention while bird hunting that he'd forgotten that when ranchers talk about pasture size in Montana, its not in acres, but in sections and how that can lead to good management for game and sportsmen. The average Farmer and Rancher knows more about game management than your typical over educated FWP stooge. The only FWP people that seem to have any sense at all grew up on a farm or ranch, and/or in a farming community. I'm not a believer in total eradication of unpopular species. But I do believe that hunting to help control problem animals is a good solution compared to allowing mother nature to find the balance. Its been my experience under modern "natural" conditions its either milk and honey or Disease and Starvation for the wildlife. I prefer to skip the disease and starvation as much as I can by harvesting game and predators into sustainable levels for the given area. But hey thats just one mans opinion.