identified the culprits

We arrived at the ranch house yard this morning to find the thieves that have been conducting garden raids munching away.  We jumped from the pickup to apprehend them, but as you can see they escaped by exiting through the back.  If we ever see their rear again we should be able to identify them.  Considering the raccoon, the deer and the cows all gaining access to the garden in recent weeks there won't be any vegetable canning done this year.    

corral improvements

The corrals at the ranch have been solid board fences that gave cattle protection when the calving season was in the winter and early spring.  Our calving season has been moved to late spring and the cows are not brought into the corrals. These corrals are now 35 to 70 years old and needing to be replaced. We are weaning calves at the ranch this year instead of taking them to a feedlot, so we have started replacing corrals so we can make the calves more secure as they adapt to new surroundings.  As you can see the fence design is more open and less expensive, but still a lot of work to build.

fire near ranch

This past week has been bad for lightning caused fires north of the ranch.  The West Ash Creek fire in the photo is burning within 15 miles of us. The 3 fires have burned 135,000 acres at this time and are still not under control.  The second photo is smoke in our valley--you couldn't see more than 1/2 mile.  Currently the wind has changed and we can now see, the fire is not coming towards us at this time.  The National Guard with helicopters, the Forest Service with tanker planes and many fire departments are at the scene.   Our neighbors that have tanker trucks are hauling water to the fire fighters.