Thieves captured

 The ranch has had a difficult time with raccoon throwing feed out of the self feeders that we keep grain in to supplement calves.   The calves get most of their nutrition from grass in the pastures, but enjoy an extra boost to their diet from the feeders.  We don't mind feeding a few raccoon because they are interesting creatures.  However every night they come to the feeders and throw out shovels full of grain into the dirt then the calves won't eat it.  The raccoon are playing with their food.  So far in the last few months 15 raccoon have been captured and relocated.

Drilling deeper

 We now have 5 wells that have both wind pumping and solar powered pumping on the ranch.  However 1 well at 222 feet deep the solar hasn't been used for several years because the solar will pump it dry and then the only option is to wait a few hours for the casing to refill.  When only the wind is used the well does not pump dry, but it can only support 45 pairs and it is needed to support 100 pairs.  Under the premise that if we went deeper a better aquifer would be found it was decided to drill a new hole.  However, after drilling to 360 feet with no better water source being found we gave up and filled in the new hole.  Now we go with plan B.

antique search

We  have often searched for artifacts at the old stage station site with very limited success.  This summer when the grand kids visited we gathered the metal detectors and hunted for metal at the site of a long deserted homesteaders claim.  Once again the efforts were futile, but we had fun digging up the few pieces of metal detected.