Info sidebar: Outfitters, guest ranches and even some cattle ranches, must always decide whether to "lease" their horse herd for their season, or to own the herd or a combination of both. The biggest advantage of leasing is being able to send them away for the majority of the year, when you are not using them. As most back country areas are only accessible for general pack trip recreation from mid-June to September, it doesn't make sense to pay for feed for your stock for a full 12 months. However, if the guest ranch or outfitter has winter pasture available, which the stock can graze on without supplemental feed, it can be much more cost-effective to own your herd or at least a portion of it. So, the term "winter pasture" generally refers to a location where there is grass that is typically free from snow, either via winds, warmer temperatures or low snow fall. While sometimes they may need supplemental hay fed, it is usually only for a short time.
In our case, our "winter pasture" is relatively close (which isn't always the case), and is located on both private and public pastures down on the Madison River. Each winter, the river ices over and spreads out and the ice flow greatly exceeds the banks. That ice, as it starts to break up and move down river, carries the "jack-leg" fence with it.
ANOTHER Info Side note:(Jack-leg refers to the wooden 'posts' which are crossed near the top to make a long "x", that just sit on the ground rather than being driven into it and are spaced approximately 10' apart, on which either wooden rails can be placed, or in our case, 4 strands of wire).
So, as the fence is torn apart & carried downstream, the wire gets broken. Our job was to find as many of the missing jack-legs that had been carried away, as possible. Return them to their locations and re-string the wire if we were able. So, from afar, you'd have seen several people wandering around a big open (ROCKY) pasture, pointing at the ground. (That was me doing the pointing) and Jeff coming along and picking up the jack-leg, one on each shoulder) and carrying them back to the fence line. Then MORE wandering, looking for wire and then looking for the END of the wire, culminating in the painful/frustrating/time-consuming/scarring task of trying to roll the rusty old barb wire up neatly for future use. Once we found as many jack-legs as possible and placed them in their homes, we filled in any bare spots with metal t-posts pounded into the (very rocky) ground. Once posts were ready, wire was re-strung. Fixing gates and corner posts were also some time-consuming tasks.
While there, we saw the baby fawn in the picture at the top of the blog and lots of Antelope.
Once that job was completed, we drove to Big Sky Saturday evening and spent the night at the Corral Bar & Motel. This was somewhat poignant as that was the last full weekend they were open. Due to new wealthy neighbor who has chosen to no longer honor the agreement the Corral owner (Devon) has had with owners of that parcel for years, the business has no location for it's septic system, requiring it to shut down. The owners did their best to raise the $400,000 the new neighbor was requiring in order to purchase the very small parcel, but just didn't have the time as they had to shut down by June 13th.
On Sunday, we enjoyed a wonderful "old home" week at Big Sky Christian Fellowship as several friends who had also moved away chose that Sunday to visit. After church, we picked up our "new to us" ride, a 97 Ford F350 4wd Dually. Now we just have to find a buyer for the Expedition (hint, hint to all you readers! :) After going to Bozeman for some errands, we had a nice drive home.
The rest of the week was mostly taken up with ranch work and prep for our upcoming pack trip. This included a LOT of baking for me, a trip to Costco, and assisting our boss with some bookwork. Jeff spent the week spraying pasture weeds (a long & tedious task on 180 acres as you put a 100 gallon tank on the truck, fill it with your water & weed killer & then drive slowly back & forth, a truck width at a time, spraying the plants). He also took a day ride Friday, repaired window screen, irrigated, fenced, etc. (I'll give a more 'typical' day explanation in a later post). Ice cream Thursday night in town, and then a Prime Rib dinner last night were my birthday celebrations. We worked all week but do get tomorrow (Sunday) off so that'll be nice. AND we get to visit with Cora whom we've missed seeing.
Well, I think I covered this week. Not too wild, but we have seen lots of baby antelope and deer, a bear on the hillside behind the cabin, lots of beautiful Tanagers, eagles hawks and other birds. We live in a pretty amazing place. I hope all of you are living your wild dreams and preserving your wonderful memories.
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