Oh, Hail!

The nasty stuff finally hit us on Saturday. It was a bit of a deceiving storm. I was home in the afternoon mowing and noticed that the sky was getting dark so I finished up, took my laundry off the clothesline and went inside. J called awhile later to see if it was raining here. The wind had come up and the way the sky looked I thought it should be pouring, but it only sprinkled here. I watched a nasty cloud that was headed to the southeast so thought the heavy stuff had missed us. Wrong!

It appeared that the storm hit about at the barn at R's. There must have been a raging river through the yard there that took out this brace. Notice the tree branch stuck in the brace that washed down from the house. There are branches and leaves everywhere! R's girlfriend was here for the weekend and her car was covered in leaves and grass when they got home. When she got it cleaned off she discovered lots of hail damage.

We took a little farm tour on Sunday morning. Talk about depressing. Almost all our peas are wiped out as well as the neigbor's who we farm for. These pictures were taken about 18 hours after the storm and look at this bank of hail.

This used to be a field of peas.

And a wheat field.

Not only is there the financial loss, but it creates a mess and changes plans for next year. We don't want it to be a weedy mess so will have to spray it all again, and it is pretty sandy soil so we're worried about it blowing if it gets dry (which is always does here at some point). We still have lots of good crops out there, so we hope any future storms don't bring hail to any of that. I'm trying to look on the bright side...a shorter harvest. Maybe we'll be able to make the race in Kansas this fall.

Long Weekend....and Week

Our weekend was a little crazy because we were the only members of the whole family that were home. R was in a wedding near Helena and left Wednesday night leaving his puppy with us. C headed to Canada on Friday while J left on Wednesday to see an orthopedic doctor (more on that later) and a reunion of K's family on the weekend. Thankfully, Jared came to help us instead of going to the lake with his parents. That was, however, a bit of a mixed blessing. M had Jared on the swather while he was trying to bale, but the swather was having some issues that Jared wasn't able to deal with. M is used to calling J or C to figure out what could be wrong and fixing it so he could continue with his baling while conditions were right. He was feeling very alone with no backup. Add to that the fact that he was baling about 30 miles from where Jared was swathing.

In the midst of that I did the unthinkable. He asked if I would come help him get his tractor unstuck and I said I was too busy, which I was. My nephew was going to come the next day to do some trim work for me so I was trying to get some stain and varnish on the trim and later was headed to town for a massage and couldn't reschedule it. I was sure he was somewhere where he shouldn't have gone so didn't feel very sorry for him. A few days before he had sent me to get Jared unstuck and all I did was get myself stuck so I didn't want to go there again.

While R was gone I had to deal with the DirecTV installation at his house. That was interesting considering the technician looked like he (and I use that term loosely) was in the middle of a sex change. Josie (Joseph) had some manly features but had a ponytail and was wearing a cap that said "Cowgirl" with bling, women's jeans, eye makeup and I'm pretty sure a bra. Hard not to stare, I'll tell you. I was disappointed that no one saw him/her but me. He was from Miles City and had an 8-year-old son. None of that computes in my mind!

R and J were home by Sunday night but that didn't improve things much. J has a separated shoulder from tipping over his side-by-side while chasing the neighbor's cows out of our lentil field. You can imagine how happy that whole situation made him. The doctor is recommending that he just wait and see how it feels in a month or so and then determine if he needs surgery. Of course, it's his right shoulder so that makes it even more disabling. Jared will have to be his right hand man for awhile. Hopefully, he won't try to do too much too soon. We were really feeling sorry for K putting up with him while in pain and crabby plus a baby and a dog and several days in Billings. She was happy to see him head to the farm on Monday.

R moved the swather to Opheim but continued to have problems and ended up making two parts runs to Glasgow. Then he smacked a deer on the way home. Not a good day! The next day we had rain so they spent more time working on the swather but had to wait for a part to come in. Hopefully, it is rolling now.

While they were waiting for the parts to come in they did some fencing so that we can move our big bunch of cows when we get some time. We've had some bull trouble in one of our other pastures. The neighbor has 150 heifers that aren't to be bred but aren't spayed next to our pasture so the bull wanted to go visiting. They moved our herd back across the road a week or two ago so that four fences and a road might keep him with the herd he was supposed to be with long enough to get them bred. R moved the cows back yesterday and brought the bull home. The only traveling he'll be doing now will be to the sales ring.

M says we are going to disappear for a week but I'm not holding my breath. He still has a lot of haying left to do.

50 Shades of Green

Everyone comments on how green it is here this year, but as I was looking across the fields the other day it occurred to me that there are so many shades of green. From the mint green of the pea fields to the kelly green of the wheat to the olive green of the grass hills. Throw in the white flowers on the peas, the yellow flowers on the mustard and the purple alfalfa flowers in the hay fields and there is a riot of color. Then add the smells; of the mint in the bogs, the sweet clover and now the alfalfa. I walked out my front door this morning and was assaulted by the beautiful smell of alfalfa. I could go on about the numerous wildflowers, most of which are past their prime by now. One day when they were at their peak we were moving cows and I spent more time looking at the ground to see what was growing than I did watching where I was going!

Some years by this time the dog days of summer have arrived and everything is turning brown, but thankfully, we have had some July rains (affectionately known as "money makers") this year. I had lots of opportunities to gaze across the prairie today as first I made the trek to check on the solar pump. That's about 8 miles of prairie trail (and 3 gates) to the east and takes about an hour to get there and back. Then later I took backroads to pick up M who was baling even farther east. I enjoy the sight of what some people may call nothingness, just wide open prairie under the big sky.

Peas flowering

Peas, wheat, lentils and mustard

Peas, wheat and grass hills

Haying (There Goes July)

It's official, haying has begun. R started the season off by swathing the highway ditches and then moved to some leased land early last week. M gave him some days off so that he wouldn't get too far ahead of the baler which wasn't even out of the shed yet, and then we had rain so they're not making fast progress. M raked some this morning and did finally make some bales this afternoon, but there is more rain in the forecast for the next few days so he's not sure he wants to lay any more on the ground right now. Last year it seemed like the haying season went on forever. R tells me it won't be so bad this year since he's here to help. I hope he's right. I'm still holding out a small glimmer of hope that we'll have time to do something fun before we get into harvest. Even M took the 4th off and we took in the festivities for the Scobey Centennial celebration. The high point of my day was babysitting my granddaughter for a couple of hours and getting some smiles from her.