Last Day Of Fall

Our last day of fall looks like this.

We have had an unusually high amount of snow this fall.  Not real typical in Southern Colorado.  h 

Tree Hunt

We took time on Sunday to go hunt for our Christmas tree.  We decided to wait til the Bronco’s game ended since Tebow was having an amazing game once again.  So we finally set out in the cold and blowing snow as you can see in the photos, to find a tree.  The snow was really coming down and we I started to get cold so I just told Duane to cut whichever one he was closest to, “yep, looks good from here”   I told him.  Once we got it in the house we realized that maybe it wasn’t the best choice.  🙂  Oh well, we had a nice time up on the mountain together making memories!

Good Sabbath

Hope you had a relaxing and peaceful Sabbath!!

Shipping Cattle

Catching up on some old posts. In September we shipped off the 1500 head of outside yearlings. They were Texas cattle and had been here all summer long. We wanted to have them off by the first of September due to dropping temperatures. When the nights get real cold the cattle have a higher chance of getting brisket. And since these cattle were from Texas and we are at 9000+ feet we definitely have to watch out for this. However we had to put off shipping for a few weeks due to the fact that the corrals were still not usable. We hired a great welder for 3 weeks and he was able to get us up and operating so that we could ship towards the end of the month.

As of about a week ago all our cattle have been shipped off to the lower ranch where they will winter.   We will receive them back come spring and green grass as long as we have water.  Due to some major water shortages, Duane has some water projects in the works.  The past few years have been dry up here causing the shortages, couple that with not enough wells and tanks it can become a serious issue real fast.

Cattle Buying Trip

Duane and I headed out on Thanksgiving weekend to look at a few different groups of cattle for sale.  We started out on our journey heading south to Trinidad, CO.  We looked at a group of 259 first calf heifers.

This group was a bit on the light side due to the drought conditions in Southern Colorado.  And as you can see they didn’t have much for groceries.  We decided to sort off the big end to total about 150 or so head.  Duane will go back down on Monday to sort and preg check before we receive them on Tuesday. 

On Sunday we headed North to the Laramie Plains region.  McFadden, WY to be exact.

We looked at this group of 55.  They were in very good condition and as you can see had plenty of groceries.  We only wish they had more to sell.

We will be receiving these gals here in the next week or 2.  The last group we looked at was just South of Laramie and there was 92 head, however they were priced a bit too high, so we passed on the last group for now. 

 

 

Stirrup Ranch Part Deux

We are back to blogging and back to the Stirrup Ranch as well.  We actually managed this ranch about 4 years ago.  We have been here for a few months already, and have been very busy trying to catch up on a long list of needs the ranch has.  We arrived here the first week of August I believe.  So the time is certainly flying by and a lot of projects have been completed.  However dh always finds more projects that need doing, such as finishing the corral water lines and setting tanks.  We just finished shipping all our cattle down to the lower ranch for the winter.  We sit at 9200 feet here in this valley and it is really quite harsh at times, the cattle will be more content at the lower elevation.

We Are Back

The Water Project

Tevye

Boys, boys, boys, all we seem to get is boys!!  Nope not one dairy heifer has been born to this family yet.  We keep hopin that maybe someday we will get a girl.  We’ll have to wait and see I guess.  Tzeitel gave birth to this little guy last week.  He is 1 week and a day old today. 

Tzeitel has been a very good mother.  Tevye is her first calf.  We bought her and her younger sister from a ranch NW of here last fall.  She has been out on pasture all her life, which is one of the reasons we wanted her.  She was not from a dairy farm.  For us this works a lot better, since we will be keeping her on grass and using her for our family milk cow until Chava (pronounced Hava) calves again.   And if you are curious about our choice of names, you have no further to look than good o’l ‘Fiddler on the Roof’  for our inspiration.  We love that movie!   Want to know one of my favorite quotes from that movie?  Well I’ll tell ya…. it’s from Golde the mother:  ” I could die from such a man!!”  And D would say his favorite quote is from Tevye:  “Patience woman, patience!!”  or something like that.   Yep, we have lots of fun in this here family!!  Shalom! 😉

Birthday Boy

March 17th, 2003, Wade H. was born.  And oh what a welcome to the world he had.  He was born in a blizzard!!  Thankfully indoors and not in the middle of the storm.

He is our St. Patrick’s day baby and oh how we love him!!  I don’t know where the time goes, it is like you blink and he went from little pudgy boy with the huge blue eyes to an 8-year-old motor cycle riding dare-devil. 

We celebrated with the CO cousins at grandma and grandpa’s.   Everybody wore the costume of their choice (except Pais, not sure what she was doin).

Iron man, Cinderella, Pais, Felicity, Sacagawea, Darth Vader, Army Ranger and grandma as Corella DeVille.  (I know my spelling is probably wrong on a couple of these but I don’t feel like going and looking them up :))

Grandma is always so good about rounding up everyone and playing lots of games!  Musical chairs are always a favorite.

He loved all the gifts he received!!  Thanks grandpa and grandma for hosting his party!!

Iceland

We had another cold front blow through over the past 2 days, and this morning we were covered in ice.  I think it was around 34*F  when we took these photos.  The ice was falling from the trees in huge bursts as the temperature was warming up.  I think we are supposed to get up around 57*F today.  So another big warm up after some very bitter cold temps.  We did not have any problems with calves freezing this go round.  This next week looks to be another beautiful spring like week.  

Catchin some rays on a cool morning.  Or maybe, just waiting for Mag to come and spoil them! 🙂