December 6th @ 60º F

This weekend may have been our last weekend of beautiful Fall '08 weather. The weather has been very pleasant here this past week with several morning of heavy frost, and afternoon's being shirt sleeve weather.

Friday Kittee and I took care of business around the house after going to Walla Walla and looking at some tile for a bathroom makeover. Friday evening after my bus route, I got home worked in the garden, fed horses and we went back to Walla Walla for the evening of our Annual Banquet of the NWQHA.

This past week I have been moving the asparagus out of Rusty's keep and into a new garden row. Allot of this work was removing/moving the horse manure from around the asparagus plants that came up in Rusty's keep last spring, digging out the crowns and moving them to their new home turf. I was quite surprised at the size of some or the crowns, and glad to see that as I spread them out we will have a full 100' row of fresh cut asparagus to enjoy next spring. I have also been amazed that Rusty did not eat all the asparagus as it emerged this year. He only nibbled a few of the fern-leaf tops, leaving me many flags to follow to get to the underground crowns.


Saturday we very dutifully set our sights on horseback riding again through the wheat fields in our backyard. The weather was perfect, mostly clear blue skies, and the thermometer on both ends of the house were reading 60º. Again we thought about taking Derby and Misty to the top of Bowlus Hill, but Misty got kicked in the leg by a shod horse this week, and I felt that it would be better not to stress her by climbing a hill like Bowlus Hill, so we just casually rode the harvest trails, enjoying the scenery and wide open spaces.

Trail pictured above is looking over Kittee's left shoulder, as we get to keep an eye on our mile high wedding site at the Breaks of the So. Fork.
Below is a view of Bowlus Hill, (on the far left) from our wheat field riding range. The harvest/combine trails make a great place for us to ride and watch for gopher holes and animal borrows.

After our afternoon ride we got back home in good timing to give a little sweet grain to most of our "needy" horses, catch our NWPR 3:00 p.m. edition of Prairie Home Companion, from The Town Hall - NYC which was a very good show this week. Thereafter we headed upriver to the Cospers to help them with their new ranch website works. While there Cheri served a delicious roast beef dinner, with pumpkin pie dessert and late evening ginger sugar cookies. A most pleasant evening with Dale and Cheri. This past week Dale and Dale and Cheri got about half of their website operational, most of this web work job should be completed this next week.

Sunday began with our seasonal eggnog lattés while soaking in bed for awhile. Outside temperature at 8:00 was 51º and skies were cloudy. Today's weather forecast was for rain to be moving in. After a second latté we rolled out of bed and Kittee went out to feed horses while I worked on breakfast. Our plans for today was to go to the Walla Walla arena and ride, but since it was warm and the rains were not here this a.m. I told Kittee I would stay home and work on moving the rest of the asparagus. So after breakfast Kittee loaded Derby and Nugget and headed for the arena, I grabbed the shovel and wheelbarrow and started digging up more asparagus crowns.
About 1 o'clock I had maybe a half dozen crowns left to bury, and the rain began. Just about perfect timing as now this weeks transplants are now being very well soaked with a warm December rain of this afternoon/evening.

It didn't take long after the rains began, when the horses that were scattered in the pastures, all headed for the barn and stood around grumbling about the afternoon's wet weather changeover.

So our first week/weekend of December '08 has felt much more like springtime than heading into the fringe of winter.

a weekend in the life at McKuster Ranch --- Dale