Hello everyone!
The holidays are fast approaching and, as usual, I’m wondering where the time went between harvesting tomatoes and calculating how long it takes to thaw a turkey in the fridge.
This is my favorite time on the ranch. The cows are on winter pasture, so we don’t have to feed them everyday. Likewise with the horses. If the weather cooperates, the horses and cows might be on pasture until spring. We get a lot of wind where we live, so the snow blows into drifts, scrubbing the pastures and allowing the cows, horses, deer and antelope to continue to graze. We have a herd of close to 30 antelope that winter with the cows.
The only guy we have to feed is the bull, and he’s on a diet. His bedding is edible, and his weight kind of got out of control, so now we have him on rations.
That said we did have a bit of early snow. This is my sweetie and I feeding in September!
And here are the cows waiting to be fed…in September.
Thankfully the weather has calmed down, the snow melted and we were able to do some last minute fence fixing. Fencing-fixing is like laundry–it never ends.
And a young moose came to visit. He’s actually larger than he looks in the picture. He’s about as big as a horse–and totally fearless. Thankfully, he took exception to the riding lawnmower and decided to settle in a place with a little less noise.
Now that winter is almost here, I’m looking forward to spending my free time writing (so many ideas!), sewing and reading. I have some history books I want to read and a lot of western romances to catch up on.
How do you plan to spend your time as the holidays approach?
In the eastern part of the United States, it wasn’t necessary to store as much winter forage/hay as it was in the west. Due to the long, harsh winters, western ranchers often needed to store more hay than the average hayloft could hold. Thankfully, due to the low humidity, hay could be stacked outside, rather than under a barn roof, without rotting as it would do in the east.
So cool idea #1 – Have you ever heard the saying “Making honey out of dog #$*&”? Now you can make electricity from refuse – specifically manure. Manure makes gas, which is then converted into electricity. Methane never smelled so good. If you take a look at 
The other cool idea is one I came across researching some areas in Southern Alberta. I found one particular operation that’s kickin’ it old skool when it comes to methods. The OH Ranch takes conservation very seriously – through a Heritage Rangeland Designation and Conservation Easements. What does that mean? I’m going to snag the explanation from the 
I’m a farm girl. Maybe that’s why writing westerns feels so good to me – I understand that soul-deep link to the land, I understand being at the mercy of Mother Nature and I know for certain that growing up on a farm is responsible for my work ethic. Work hard, treat people honestly, be a straight shooter. Everything else just kind of looks after itself.
I’m almost ashamed to admit that I’ve had to research haying a little bit. Equipment has changed over the years, and my memory fades a little. I found it quite interesting, actually. I looked at pictures of different kinds of balers and rakes. I read about drying times before baling and different types of bales and the advantages of each. 
Where I grew up, most of the farmers made the small, rectangular bales but when I moved out west to Alberta, mostly there are the huge round bales and sometimes a new shape – bigger square bales. I always kind of wondered the reasoning for the round bales, actually. At home in Atlantic Canada, you hayed, you made small bales, and you brought the bales back to the haymow. You never left them in the field. With the large round bales, you have more hay with a smaller surface area so it protects from the elements, meaning you can leave the bales in the field. There are coverings too. Some that leave the ends open, protecting the surface but allowing airflow so they don’t ferment, and complete wrappings that allow the bale to become silage – rather than using a silo.
But there’s another component to haying that has nothing to do with function. There are feelings. It sounds funny, I know, but the feelings needed no research at all. For that I just drew on my own memory.