All in a Day’s Work

Trailing at sunrise…again. It was a breezy beautiful Thursday morning.

During the fire on Squaw Mountain, Patrick and I, with a little help from a wonderful neighbor and friend, got our cattle out of the meadows on Squaw to the safety of the meadows closer to home.

Now it’s time to truck them to the Laramie Plains to join the rest of the cattle and graze for a couple of months until  the calves are shipped to their new owners. These girls have done a lot of re-locating in the past 2 weeks.

The rising sun gave to beautiful silhouettes of Mark and Phil as they crossed the bridge guiding the cattle up the hill.

Once we got closer to the corral, Mark  stood guard to make sure the ladies didn’t turn and go the wrong way. They needed to aim for the open gate at the sunburst.

Phil made sure they didn’t run down the fence line. And I… took pictures.

Once we arrived at the plains and loaded the cattle in the corral, we gave them time to mother up and then Mark and Phil led them over the hill to water.

It’s a long drive to the Plains from the ranch and we passed some smoking mountains.  Yep, you guessed it. Earlier this week the volunteers were fighting a fire on a section of the plains. Lightning once again created a lot of smoke and flames. I didn’t go to this one so I don’t have much info. Patrick spent a full night and day at the fire until the feds arrived. This thing burned up Pole Mountain and got 50 yards from a ranchers home. Patrick is so ready for snow. I am too, but I’m just not ready for the hurricane winds that comes with it.

We stopped by the South Ranch for the guys to do, well, guy things. Count hay bales, take inventory of machinery, move horses, etc.  I did my thing, which as you know, my thang is to find photographs.

This field is covered in Sowthistle. They look like dandelions but they aren’t. They are really sticky and when horses eat them, their mouths are covered in their sticky yellow juice.

Patrick says it’s Rosinweed but it doesn’t look that to me when I look in my Weeds of the West book.
Anyway, the bees like them.

Finally, we got home as the sun was going down. I drove the atv to the house and against the purple sky, I saw a group of bucks roaming the hilltops.

It was a good day and we got a lot done. Now, for a restful weekend…I hope.

Yours till the cow moooooos,
Leah

---