June 2010 recap

As I sit and write this blog update, I look outside and see the wind is blowing - hard. When I flip to TWC for weather conditions in Milton-Freewater it says that our current temp is 79° with a 24 mph wind and gust up to 37 mph with the east and west horizons beginning to brown out of view with blowing dust. I think I shall stay in for the day; it is Monday the 12th of July. This morning at 6:30 I did take Shaiela to the vet in Walla Walla for a hormone shot to push her into a heat cycle with hope that she will be ready to breed this coming weekend.

Well it has been almost a month since I made a blog entry, and since then we have been very busy around the ranch and horseback riding elsewhere. It has been hard to try to find time to sit at the computer and get much work done with the weather outside turning springtime beautiful and school being out of session. With this in mind I am not going to try to recap every detail as I sit here. For this blog entry I am going to refer to my photo album since 13 June with photo journal of the comings and goings of Kittee and myself around our McKuster Ranch life.

On the 13th of June Misty was showing signs of coming into heat, so on the 14th we brought she and Rusty together for a couple of days.

We have tried to breed Misty before without success and again this time we had no success. Our vet Dr. Doug Corey says that Misty has very small ovaries and for that reason maybe barren. We would like a pretty Paint/ Arabian, but if we don't get one, we have Misty, a wonderful trail riding companion.

Wednesday 6/18 was my first fishing outing of the season with co-worker Randy and his brother. That day we spent on the Tucannon River in WA fishing the stocked ponds there. This is one day of all days that I wish I had had my camera, as when we walked up to Deer Lake a Great Blue Heron took flight from the pond, and across the pond from us sit a beautiful Bald Eagle in the top limb of a tree, that was a beautiful sight and I did not have my camera. That evening Kittee and I had fresh trout for dinner.

Friday June 18, Kittee and I stayed home and she had her secretary bring some work out to her from Pendleton. Aurora also brought along her family for some pony riding...


Later that same evening we noticed that Goldie was acting out in front of the geldings, so on the 19th, we put she and Rusty together for a couple of days of close encounters of the first kind.

She has not been pregnant checked, but we are hoping that next May we will have another foal much like our Summer.

With the advent of an early spring in February and March, we spent alot of time riding horses around here with downriver Robert. During that time we discussed alot of bird watching with Robert and that created quite an interest in our local bird population. Since that time and Robert thinks it might be due to the cool wet weather we had in April and May that we had an above average showing of colorful birds around our neighborhood. We had been paying close attention to the nesting Bullock's Orioles we had in our backyard Walnut tree and one morning while doing something on the computer I looked out the office window and there sits a Bullock's Oriole

A couple of day later downriver Robert and I headed in the direction of the Tucannon River partly due to the great fishing trip that Randy and I had at Deer Lake, the previous week. Robert has a new Orvis 4-wt. Clearwater rod/reel that he needed to train to catch fish, and found that day it worked well. We had a great day working on Deer and Big 4 lakes. Our best success was again on Deer Lake with alot of C&R fun...


Upon returning back to the ranch, we celebrated our Summer's birthday - 1 yo on the 23rd.

Oh what a sweet girl she is and it is hard to believe,
how much she has grown in a year.

Again we asked Rusty to go back into action on Friday 6/26 to service Kootenai as she was showing to our gelding herd, signs of going into heat.

The two of them spent that day and Saturday together except for the time that Kevin was here taking care of everyone hooves.

Kevin and Summer 6-26

Tuesday 6/29 Randy and again headed out for an Oregon fishing pond -- Notellum Pond -- for an opportunity to fish for triploid rainbow trout. Oh what a day that was for fly fishing...

In the middle of the afternoon an osprey joined us
for some fishing pleasure and it's mid-day meal.

Our day of fishing turned out very well.

Then on Wednesday 6/30 after a good day's work, I decided to finish off the end of the month with my first fishing excursion in the backyard. I jumped in the river about 5:00 p.m. and fished my way upriver for about 300 yards catching probably 24+ redband trout in less than two hours.

Now one thing that I really enjoy doing when catching wild trout like this guy is to take them into some calm waters and release them and watch they swim away under their own speed...

Do you see the camo colored trout at waters edge, under the blades of grass in the above pic? It also amazes me how well wild trout are camouflaged.
That same evening we had elk burgers for dinner, while the wild trout continue to swim free in our backyard.

As I was putting away my fishing gear, Kittee arrived home and we sit out under the backyard walnut tree with a beer and watched the sunset. Whelp, in a nutshell this is the way the balance of our June 2010 was finished off.

Peace be with you,




Dale

PS. This past week our video of Thank You Goldie and Rusty went over 100,000 hits on YouTube.