Keeping the home fires burning ~or~ coming out of the fog.

Last Sunday was beautiful, we enjoyed our horseback riding time so much that downriver Robert, and I scheduled two other days this week to saddle-up and ride. Last Sunday the cats were happy to be standing in their window jungle and soaking in the sunshine. This past week was full of promise that we would get to spend time outdoors and in the sunshine. That didn’t happen.

It was Wednesday morning I got out of bed to grab a cup of coffee for Kittee and I at 5:15. The moon was shining bright and the sky was full of stars. Under those conditions I had not slept well during the night, but it was time to have a cup of coffee and prepare for my morning’s school bus route. Kittee and I lay in bed sipping coffee until time for me to hit the deck, get ready for the road. I looked outside and saw that the red light beacons on the wind turbines to our west, now pumping electricity to California were not visible. That seemed strange with all else being clear, but by the time I went out to get in my school bus everything was shrouded in fog. That morning it took an extra five minutes to get to my first stop, due to plowing through the fog bank that was rolling in for the day. Later that morning I called out on our school bus radio/communication system and asked if anyone had seen my school bus anywhere that morning, and if they could tell me where I might be found. The fog was really thick.

Getting home it was time to feed the herds and by the time I got the mare herd’s hay spread, they almost had disappeared in the fog bank.

Robert and I were hoping to go riding this day since the forecast was for sunshine. That didn’t happen. That morning after feeding, Robert and I did make a quick trip downriver looking at the river for some slots to do some Walla Walla River steelhead fishing during the balance of these winter months.
Since I had a short night’s rest, when I got back home the cats and I took a short nap before I went back out on my p.m. school bus route. Wednesday evening our Walla² Fly Fishers club had our first winter fly tying workshop and fortunately I was well rested and able stay out past my 9:00 p.m. bedtime. We had a good evening of fly tying with 13 people showing up for this first session.

Thursday, the weather forecast showed that there was to be a break in the weather and a good chance of sunshine. Again Robert and I made our plans to get in some riding time on Thursday morning before I had to make a sports trip to Pendleton on Thursday afternoon. I got home from my a.m. bus route, feed the horses ASAP, in a small rain shower and fog. Again our riding time was cancelled. On my trip to Pendleton, about halfway there the sun came out, the temperature when we got there was 50° under clear skies, but not at home. So this week was a washout with some hope of sunshine and warmer weather for the weekend.

Friday, Kittee had court duty in Milton-Freewater, so we were hoping that maybe we would get a weather break in the afternoon for some riding time. The weather stayed cool and cloudy all day Friday so our chance for afternoon riding didn’t happen. After Kittee's court time, she dropped by the M-F library and picked up the DVD set of Alex Haley's ROOTS, so we have watched these episodse for the past several night's entertainment.

Yesterday while preparing breakfast I learned it is Doppelganger Week on the Facebook channel, so I am playing along
this week using John Lennon as my celeb look alike from days gone by. Have had some folks tell me I have some resemblance to John, with short hair and longer hair.
Give Peace a change

Yesterday there was an afternoon break in the rain and dense fog, so Kittee and I went out and petted the horses for awhile.

Kittee spent her time petting mares; I spent mine petting Rusty. I had the chance to bring Misty, Goldie and Summer out of pasture earlier in the day while I was dropping hay, and I had a chance to pet them at that time. After we finished petting everyone, I grabbed a couple more sticks of wood and we heading back for the fireplace and listened one again to – A Prairie Home Companion coming from Tucson, AZ. and this week’s news from Lake Wobegon, MN. This week's show gave me a chance to reminisce about the winter of '72, when I parked my Mach-1 Mustang and hitchhiked across the USA setting up camp in the middle of the desert just west of Tucson in late January and part of February of that year... it was a neat place to winter. That was my first experience of living in the wild with coyotes, sidewinder rattlesnakes, scorpions, and Gila Monsters of the southwest. Anyway back to PHC, this week it sounded like the folks in Lake Wobegon are now in the very depths of their winter with cold, cold, snowy weather hitting those folks hard this past week.
see video attached

Sitting around the fire, listening to NPR

While listening to PHC, Kittee almost finished reading the Journals of Lewis and Clark - the Corps of Discovery, and I was doing some Internet surfing on the laptop computer via our full house WiFi system. Amazing what modern technology has done to the ole ranch house.

Today, we woke up with rain falling on everything. Kittee went out and fed the herd, I prepared breakfast and re-kindled the fire, for us to sit near for the rest of this day. This afternoon our living room has once again reached 70° as we sit by the fire, outside thermometer is reading 42°, and we are about to have a sun break for the afternoon as I look out our office window.

With the sun coming out, I think I shall go throw another log on the fire and go out and enjoy the sun and horse until the weather changes again.

Late this afternoon everyone enjoyed standing broadside to the sun...

and we had a real sunset this evening.

♫ Home, home on the range, where the skies
are not cloudy all day ♫

Happy Trails until we meet again,
Dale

The taste of Spring… how sweet it is.

The past two weeks we have had a beautiful early spring in January. This past week going out to pre-trip my school bus each morning, I only had need to wear an outer shell fleece vest, and had daybreak to light my way as I drove out of the driveway. It felt so good to know that spring is just around the corner, and we now have 12 hours of functional daylight each day. Until Saturday night we have not seen the 30° temperatures in about two weeks. No snow here, but a few miles to our east the snow level dropped to below the 2000’ last night, it didn’t freeze or frost here at the ranch.

Today we woke up with bright daylight coming through our bedroom window around 7:00 and the sun came over the mountains to the east at 8:13. We were up-and-at’em before sunrise with coffee in hand, feeding the herd, ourselves and thinking of horseback riding. With Saturday’s rain each of our rides took the opportunity to get down in the mud and roll, so the first order of business for this day’s ride was brush, brush, brush the mud out of their coats. Today, we had invited our downriver neighbor Robert to join us for a ride. While riding in our riverside arena Robert took it easy on Nugget...

while Kittee and Derby got into abit of rail jumping.




























It has been awhile since Robert has done any horseback riding (he and wife Sherry put their old-aged horses down several years ago), but like riding a bicycle, Robert got the feel of being back in the saddle pretty quickly (his saddle belong to his Grandfather – WOW a mid-1930’s vintage Hamley’s saddle). Before we finished riding Robert wanted to do a bit of trotting around with Nugget, so we all made a lap around the arena trotting, then Misty and I went into a canter. Misty finished her canter sprint with an approach to the jumping rail only to slow down in time to step over the rail. I have had her jump with me before so I was half way ready for a leap through the air on my steed.


Most of Saturday, we had rain so I spent a portion of the day working on cleaning and oiling my saddle leather.

Saturday afternoon, Kittee and I relaxed next to the radio and listened to NPR – A Prairie Home Companion and this week’s news from Lake Wobegon, MN. After listening to NPR we had dinner of large bowls of chilie bean soup, with corn chips/ cornbread, and after dinner proceed to our theater room for a Saturday night movie – Ocean’s Twelve.

This past week around the ranch, we have had plenty of fresh air, warm sunshine and I got in a lot of horse petting time. Travis our horse trainer, was here late one afternoon when I came in from my bus route to work with a couple of horses. He was having kind of a hard time with catchup, so I went out walked up to each horse and walked it back to the paddock with my arm around its neck. I also spent too much time re-configuring our computer with email address that I lost in making the changeover from dial-up email service to broadband cable. That was a bit of a bummer, losing all my archived emails from family, friends and business… but 'tis the price of progress I guess.

Saturday was Summer’s seven month’s birthday, but with the rain and damp we did not celebrate it until today’s sunshine. She is still growing, maturing and is as hug-able as ever. A sweet baby she is.

Summer at one month old.

Before I leave this blog posting, I would like to share with you a video from Baxter Black, DVM. I found this on a Facebook posting/YouTube... it is so very "American", a rural life's passion spoken from the the heart. Kittee and I enjoy Baxter Black wit and thoughts. After you take about 2 minutes to listen to this video, you might want to watch Baxter talking about "Just a dog". Hope you will follow these links and enjoy... it says alot about where I am sitting today.

Well that is about all the news from McKuster Ranch this week, where Kittee and Dale are getting a little older; the horses are getting prettier, and the cats are just laying around, getting fatter.

Hope you have a good week, where you are.
Dale

January's thaw

It has been over a week that we have had a taste of springtime in January. Last Tuesday or Wednesday we had a Chinook wind blow through the Walla Walla River Valley and since then our daytime high temperatures have been in the mid-50's to 60° with nighttime lows being in the mid-40's.
It was also last Tuesday or Wednesday that I was pluggin around on Facebook and saw where Upriver Dale was planning on making a horseback trip through my front yard leading up into Cache Hollow on Thursday mid-morning. I ask him if I might tag along and so we made it a three-some with Dale's neighbor Hutch along for the ride. I didn't make the entire route with those guys since I had to make a school bus/sporting trip to La Grande that same afternoon. It was a wonderful ride and a great mid-week break for men and their steeds.

When I got back to the ranch, I fed and grained Misty as she had expended alot of energy and sweat trotting up the Ole Cache Hollow Trail.

Also when we got back to the ranch we found several mares and Derby laid out and sunbathing.

After getting everyone settled back in place, I had to make a quick dash to cleanup and hit the road for my p.m. girls basketball trip into the mountains.
Friday was another beautiful springlike day, and the beginning of my 4-day weekend, but with sore thighs and another school sporting trip to make to Umatilla that afternoon, I just stuck around the ranch and petted horses and told Misty how much I appreciated the ride of the day before. Again I gave her extra grain and hay to replace the calories she had burned the day before.
Saturday the weather changed and the winds began to blow in one direction and sucked in the other directions with the threat of rain, so Kittee and I made our rounds in town and went to Walla Walla to get a wireless router to accommodate Kittee's laptop computer with our new broadband Internet service. Gee does all of this upgrade work nicely, with the exception that Mozilla Thunderbird does not work with Charter broadband service, at least not for me. Saturday evening while Kittee was reading the logs of Lewis and Clark/Corps of Discovery, I was using her laptop 'puter and our new wifi home installation system to listen to old Neil Young concerts. With this much entertainment we didn't listen to NPR that evening.
Sunday the weather forecast was for improving weather conditions, so we had our sights set on getting in some horseback riding that day. After breakfast the weather conditions were still a bit iffy with some heavy clouds circling the area. Then about mid-day the clouds broke and we got a dose of warm sunshine on our shoulders, so we decided to grab a quick bite of lunch and saddleup, get ready to ride. By the time we finished lunch, the clouds were beginning to gather again so Kittee decided to work Nugget in the round pen for some warming up.

Thereafter, we decide... what the heck, let's go for a ride, rain or no rain so we headed up the Ole Cache Hollow Trail. Now, reflecting on Thursday's trail ride, Misty was still acting a bit herd bound as I took her out for the trail ride, and again on Sunday she really let us know that she didn't want to go up the road again. She danced, pranced, and did her backup Fox Trot steps for about 10 minutes before getting her straightened out and headed up the hill. But thinking about it, other that two trips to the Walla Walla indoor arena, this had been the second time she has left the herd in 8-10 months and she really didn't like the idea. Anyway we got her pointed in the right direction and the four of us had a very pleasant trail ride for 4-5 miles until we hit some high winds coming from the south, so decided to turn around and head back to the ranch.

Sunday we also reunited Summer, Rosey, and Raji with the mare herd. It had been a month 12/20 since we separated Summer and Misty from Goldie for Summer's weaning process. The reunion of Summer and Goldie was quite uneventful, as the only thing that happened, was Summer stuck her nose into Goldie's hip towards her udder and Goldie turned and made one nip at Summer. That is all she said, that was all that happened upon their reunion.
Monday, again the weather was most pleasant, but the wind blew. Since our horses are not shod, we were planning to trailer Nugget and Misty around the corner to ride in our backyard on the north side of the river, but with the wind howling, we decide not. I spent the morning dropping a ton of hay out of the loft and Kittee decided to begin her further training of Rosey by giving her the feel of a saddle being cinched onto her back. Rosey will be a two-year-old in April and has once before had a pony saddle place on her back. Both times of saddling-up Rosey has been a non-event. The pony and cordura saddles maybe weigh about 20 pounds.

You can click here to watch this process in action.
NOTE: you can watch this clip in HQ and full screen.

And that's the way it is around the ranch this past week. Gee this warm January weather and sunshine really feels good. Think I shall go out and sunbath with the mares tomorrow.

Dale

January, sitting by the fire waiting for spring.

Our outdoor temperatures have moderated, but our January skies are mostly gray, and the ground is frozen about half the time. Most of my days are driving the school bus on morning and afternoon route, and feeding horses when I get home... asap mornings and evenings.

Last Wednesday here at the ranch we connected to the 21st Century by tying into Charter broadband cable/Internet connection. Gee, does that make a world of difference in how fast things move around here now. I can actually open and view emails coming at me that are larger than 250 kbs. I hope you have configured our new charter.net email address into your home puter by now. If not please drop me an email at the old oregontrail.net address before Thursday 1/14 and I will flash you our new Charter address.

Friday Kittee and I loaded Summer and Misty in the trailer and took Summer into Walla Walla for her baby vaccinations. We are now hoping that this will be the last trip we have to make to the vets until we start having pregnancy tests in the early summer.

This past weekend Kittee and I tried to stay warm, by keeping the home fire burning.

Saturday morning our outdoor temperature was sitting in the mid-30’s as Kittee went out to feed the herds and I prepared breakfast. During breakfast we moved the furnace thermostat up to 68º to really heat up the house while setting a fire to start in the living room fireplace after our work was done. After breakfast we shut the furnace off and went to work. Kittee and I re-arranged a couple of rooms in our house, and just stayed close to home for the rest of the day. While taking an afternoon break we noticed a herd of about 15 mule deer grazing on the hill in the backyard.

Saturday evening we had a delicious pot of chicken veggie soup that Kittee had put on earlier that afternoon, sit by the fire reading, then listening to a live broadcast of A Prairie Home Companion. Probably for the first time in a couple of months we raised our living room temperature to above 70º. After listening to the opera tenor Raúl Melo (see video attached), and the latest news from Lake Wobegon on A Prairie Home Companion coming from San Francisco we felt it would be fun to watch the Cali-forn-i-a Gov. Arny Schwarzenegger and Miss American Vanessa Williams doing their thing in the movie Eraser. This was quite an action packed thriller movie which followed our Friday night movie thriller - Enemy of the State very well. Lots of action, good stories back-to-back two nights in a row.


Sunday after breakfast we went to our indoor arena mid-day riding session. Kittee again took Derby and Nugget, while I took Misty. With the weather being cold and very damp I didn’t ride due to arthritis aches and pain. While Kittee was riding/ponying Derby and Nugget, I spent the time just petting and brushing Misty, Derby and Nugget.

FTR -- I marked the calendar to make note of Misty’s attitude the past few days. Late last week, actually Friday p.m. Misty and Goldie got into a kicking-pissing match with each other. This is not at all typical of Misty. The two trailer trips Misty made over the weekend, she was very reluctant to trailer load, again not typical of Misty. Kittee felt that she was having some early season hormonal mare moments. Misty is a very easy keeper as a horse, but we have not successfully bred her, I am going to track her cycles from this point in time and see if we can succeed in getting an Arabian / Paint breeding this year. This year we are hoping to breed 3 of our 4 mares, and being January we are trying to decide which ones other than Shaiela to bred, which is to be breed back to EAGLEFROMTHELIGHT as she didn’t take last year.

Today, we started with the house being quite chilled as last night’s fire had burned out. Looking outside we had freezing drizzle covering everything in ice at 5:00 a.m. After getting back from my a.m. bus route, the temperature was sitting at 38º as I was feeding the herds and about mid-morning the temperature went to 46º with sunbreaks. Made me think we were heading for March in a hurry.

Now as I eat my lunch of a large bowl of spicy curry-chicken-noodle soup I look outside and see the temperature is again at 35º and I can only see the silhouette of the barn and some horses.

And that’s the way it is around the ranch --- Dale

January '10... weather turns to muck, mud sucks

FTR -- our New Year weather continues to be Pretty damn crappy. Daytime highs are around 37º, with nighttime lows being around 34º, visibility is mostly gray and/or foggy - it's January. Horses are not very happy except at feeding times, goats are sad, cats are just laying around and groaning, bored, waiting for their next meal. Kittee and I are not doing too bad as we sit in front of our Happy Light each day waiting for spring to arrive. Weather forecast for the balance of this week is for more of the same, with a chance of overnight snowfalls. This time of year to go out and spend time with the horses and goats we have to wear our 16" muck boots as anything else on the feet will literally be sucked off by the mud, muck, yuck.
Such is life during the Muck Season.

Over the New Year holiday, Kittee and I spent our time petting, feeding the outside critters, watching indoor videos and for the Really Big Event of the holiday weekend, we went horseback riding at the Walla Walla Fairground arena. There we spent the best part of two hours, riding, troting and cantering Misty, Nugget and Derby. It made an enjoyable outing. This was the first time I had been riding in about three weekends, and the past couple of days my inner-thigh muscles can re-tell the story of those two hours of riding time.

Last week I had a knock, knock, knock upon the front door and it was our downriver neighbor, Robert dropping by and asked me if I wanted to see a Bald Eagle on the river. We made a quick run downriver and spotted the guy here in this picture...
between our house and the Sallee's house.

During this past weekend, maybe Sunday as we were loading horses into the trailer, Kittee spotted another very large Bald Eagle flying over the backyard river. Against the bluff, we could see his large black wingspan and white head and tail feather very well. He had several hawks pushing him upriver, but the eagle and it's size was quite impressive. Wish I could have gotten a good picture of that bird.

Goldie and Summer are progressing well with their weaning process. They both are in free pasture; Goldie with the adult mares and Summer with two fillies, four goats, and two Shetland ponies.

That's the way it is around the ranch this past week --- Dale