Junuary 2008

Stardate 061008

Last night the wind blew, the air got colder, it started to rain, and we turned on the heat pump. This morning while preparing breakfast, looking out the kitchen window, the clouds began to lift off the mountains, and there was a fresh snow cover at the 3000' level.

Yep, there is fresh snow on them thar hills today.

Our weather has been a bit screwy this spring. Much more cool and damp than usual. We have had only three wonderful weekend breaks of spring/ summer like weather when the temperatures went into the 80's and 90's.
This year we have had a few warm weekdays with the temperatures in the lower 70's, but by week's end we have more rain and cool temperatures move across the area.

What we thought a few weeks ago might be our last night by the backyard fireplace, turned out not to be. Over the past couple of weeks we have had a number of evenings just sitting by the fire, enjoying - watching the sunset.

Last week we begin working in our garden by putting in nice transplants on Monday and Tuesday. Tuesday it begin pouring rain as we were covering the plants with soil. Thursday I begin to plant seeds (radish, beet, carrot, lettuce, swiss chard, etc.) and yesterday I was planting bean and corn seeds. Now I am looking for a row of 80 degree days to make things grow. This year we have Kevin Walker and his young family helping in the garden and as I told he and his wife last week, we have not lost any growing time this year since we have had mostly cool, damp weather up to now.

This morning we woke up to NPR news and the regional announcer made a comment along with the weather forecast that this season's weather appears to be more like Junuary than June. Please don't think we are complaining here... we will be glad for this Junuary weather when we get to July and August and the temperatures hit 100 degrees and there is no rain or snow insight.

With rain now falling, a breeze blowing, the furnace is running and Kittee taking it easy on her shoulder, we are thinking about taking in an afternoon matinee of the new Indy Jones movie.

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To finish this blog posting for the goings and comings of the rest of this day...

Kittee and I did make it over to Walla Walla to catch the mid-afternoon matinee of the Indiana Jones - Kingdom of The Crystal Skull. We found this movie to be very entertaining, and should be viewed on the big screen to center yourself into all the action. Wow, a lot of Steven Allen Spielberg action in this one.
After the movie it was time for dinner and our Northwest Quarter Horse Assoc. meeting in Walla Walla so we just motored across town to take care of this business. We had a good membership meeting this evening, but Kittee begin to feel the pain of sitting up all day so we had dinner and left the meeting early. We did learn at the meeting that there was 5" of fresh snowfall on Basket Mtn. and 14" on the mountains around the ranch today (see pictures above & below). The garden should have gotten well soaked by the heavy rains today, so we should see some seed/ planting development as soon as we get warm weather.
After getting home I went out, moved the horses and fed Rusty. As the sun was sinking slowly in the west I was able to get a few good pics of the sun on the mountains to our east and a rainbow that had formed to add colors to the golden hue at the end of this day.

We are so blessed by the Great Spirit to live in such a beautiful open air golden cathedral as ours. Some spring days as today we have rainbow braces on the sky. This past week we had 3 evenings with rainbows, of which two evenings were with double bows arching our Walla Walla River Canyon.

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

A day at Lehman Hot Springs -or- I'm just tripping through time

Stardate 060608

Today I took a school bus load of kids from Pendleton's Sherwood Heights Elementary School to Lehman Hot Springs. This was my last school bus "trip" for this school year, and I found it most enjoyable... reliving some days gone by.

My co-worker Carolyn driving Linus and I driving Lucy, took two bus loads of kids, teachers, parents to these hot springs, in the middle of nowhere, near the northeast Oregon Gold Rush country. While there I told Carolyn of my earlier experience at Lehman Hot Springs some years ago and remembering the old rustic log lodge that once stood at this site.

Now, let me tell you a bit about what I know/ remember of Lehman Hot Springs... it was about 50 years ago that I made my first trip into the middle of "Nowhere", OR and my family spent the day at Lehman Hot Springs. Today it is not quite the same as it was then.

I shall digress just a moment... while growing up I had a love for log cabins/ log lodges and always wanted to live in one or the other. I could remembered in my childhood, there being a rustic log lodge that set in Northeast Oregon in a large Ponderosa Pine forest somewhere near the Pendleton area. I also remember at about that same trip in time that the old headlights-on-the-fenders logging trucks that came out of the forest were fully loaded with 3 sometimes 4 huge log trunks on their trailers. Today it is not quite the same as it was then. Now the late model air conditioned logging trucks come out of the forest carrying 50-75 sticks (like teepee poles) on their trailers.

Anyways, back to Lehman Hot Springs (interesting info link)... upon moving to Oregon, I asked my aunt where might there be that log lodge near the Pendleton area, that I remembered from my childhood. She told me it was probably at Lehman Hot Springs.

It wasn't too long after telling Carolyn about my early experience around these hot springs that I noticed there were pictures on the walls of days gone by. Walking around the room I saw the old rustic log lodge of Lehman Hot Springs. Asking the manager about the lodge, she told me that it had burned down many years ago, she had never seen it herself but had heard people talk about it. This day gave me a trip through time. The picture above of this resort is dated 1899.

Today these hot springs are piped into three concrete bathing pools and one cold water swimming pool. Today the water temperature in the upper pool was 114°F, the middle pool temperature was 104°F, the lower pool was 90 something degrees and the air was full of snow. Yep, when we got to the springs this morning at about 10 a.m., it was snowing. During the day we may have had 10% sun breaks with mostly rain and snow showers throughout the day. Upon leaving the hot springs at 3:00 p.m. it was snowing... that's living with the weather in Northeast Oregon; usually in April and May. It was a perfect day for kids to play/swim in the great outdoors of our beautiful Oregon Territory.

This was an enjoyable day trip, as the drive along Hwy 395 is quite beautiful this time of year. Driving through Ukiah, OR (for the first time in years/ since moving to Milton-Freewater) little there has changed, except a couple of businesses' doors had closed. Upon getting to the hot springs, I was able to take a few pictures of the kids at water play (with Carolyn's camera), and had time to read some of a horse textbook. A rather relaxing day at work.

a day in the life --- Dale

Springtime at McKuster Ranch

Stardate 040908

It has been awhile, actually I see that it has been a month since I have been at the blog site to make mention of life around the ranch. Spring has arrived in beautiful Northeast Oregon and most of our life is now spent with outdoor activities from morning 'til dark.

Kittee and I have been putting in a fair about of riding time from the ranch's front gate as well as tuning up Misty and Derby with early spring training sessions in the front pasture, and the arena.

We are still getting some snow on an every other day basis to some extent, but every other day looks like the picture below (which I made this day) with mostly sunshine on our shoulders and snow on the mountains.

About one day a week we are getting some snow ground coverage here at the ranch, the rest of our spring is about half and half rainy or sunny days and a mix thereof. The weather forecast for this weekend's weather is for pure sunshine and temperatures around 75º. And yes, we plan to saddle up and gittyup for rides all over our neighborhood, wish you were here. Actually this afternoon Kittee is hoping to come home early enough for us to get in a 3-5 mile ride today.

Generally once or twice a week now, Rusty has the opportunity to go out to pasture and run, run, run. Rusty rarely stands still, whether in pasture or in his keep.

The last couple of weeks he has shed much of his light chestnut winter coat, and now has a very shiny liver chestnut coat with light rusty mane and tail. I know we are a bit bias, but we think this guy is gorgeous in his shiny new spring coat.

Most of the rest of the herd still have a fair amount of winter coat and guard hairs, so they are still a bit shaggy in appearance.

This coming Sunday afternoon I have an appointment with our trainer to put Rusty in the round pen and begin working with him to become a saddle horse. This venture should be quite an interesting trip. I hope to apply what I can learn to our Goldie to begin working her into a saddle horse as well.

Shaiela, is getting more and more round as her due date draws nearer. Kittee and I are getting more and more excited to see just what we are going to get with our first Arabian breeding. Kittee has already separated Shaiela from the herd at night, giving her a deep bed of straw for resting behind a close gate in the barn.


Kittee declares that Shaiela is now getting quite tired of being pregnant, and as her udder has began to fill, this is a good sign that her delivery time is getting very much closer.
Shaiela doesn't run much anymore ;>)









It has been a few weeks ago that we bought a new hard disk camcorder just to be ready for the event. We intend to produce a full play DVD of this foal's early year(s) at McKuster Ranch. Once we figure how to make this new machine work we will be posting our videos to YouTube for your reference point of view.

Last Saturday we had a most pleasant afternoon ride out and about Cashe Hollow Road which is just across from the ranch gate. That day I took out our new video camera and made a video of our ride, which was very usual for the ride and the pictures until Misty and I began to trot up the road. That made a very amusing video production from horseback, and now I know why westerns were filmed from a vehicle or aircraft, never a horse.

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As springtime progresses here at the ranch I have got most of the garden tilled and weeds cleaned out of my rows, so we should start planting in another week or two with a few cool weather crops. Plans are now to garden about 1/2 of what we have usually done in the past with a very small crop of garlic and most everything else to be canning/freezing veggies and berries.

Kittee has been biting at the bit to put seeds in the ground, but I have pointed out to her that the past two Sundays we have still been getting snow. with the Sunday of March 30 we were covered with snow most of the day. That day we were snow covered when we got out of bed, we were snow covered at lunch, and even though it cleared of snow mid-afternoon we found ourselves covered with snow before nightfall. It was a beautiful day, as during the morning feeding we saw and heard flocks of geese flying by through the snow, after breakfast there was a flock of turkeys in the pasture across the road from us (I counted 10 toms and hens) and after lunch we were out visiting Rusty with our trainer Travis and watched a herd of deer moving across the snow covered bluff.

I have now got most of the pastures fertilized and they are turning green and developing some good grazing grasses. Most days we are turning the herd out to pasture for about 3-4 hours a day while supplementing their diet with alfalfa hay.

This is how our spring is progressing at the ranch in 2008. This is about all the news we have for now, hope you will find the opportunity to come visit at your leisure.

Happy Trail to you.

a day in the life at the ranch --- Dale