A good time of the year for a draught

The scurs and Weather Eye are back to receiving letters of scorn and derision. Is Old Man Winter coming in the back door or is he on the front porch? Starting Thursday, sunny with a modest chance of overnight snow. Highs in the mid-30’s with lows in the low 20’s. Partly sunny on Friday with a slight chance of forenoon snow. Highs in the mid-30’s with lows in the upper teens. Mostly sunny Saturday, with highs in the upper 30’s and lows in the low 20’s. Sunday, mostly sunny with highs in the mid-40’s and lows in the upper 20’s. Sunny on Monday with highs in the upper 50’s and lows in the upper 30’s. Tuesday, mostly sunny with highs in the low 60’s and lows in the upper 30’s.. Cloudy on Wednesday with a good chance of rain. Highs in the low 50’s with lows in the low 30’s. On the 7th we’ll see 11 hours and 30 minutes of daylight as our daylight starts increasing at 3 minutes per day. Daylight Saving Time begins at 2 a.m. on March 9th. On March 12th the sun will rise at 7:30 a.m. CDT. The normal high for March 4th is 33 and the normal low is 17. The scurs will dial Jackie Chiles if they fall off the chair changing clocks Sunday at 2 a.m. 

Hearing more people fretting about dry soils. As Mark Seeley liked to put it, for the most part this is a good time of the year to have a drought. I certainly haven’t missed moving snow. I know some livelihoods rely on income from it and more power to them. This has been two years back to back and I feel for them. I’ve also heard nonsense like it’ll never snow again only to see those folks eat their words. It’s true, the topsoil isn’t saturated, but it doesn’t need to be. We received ample precip in November and December that added to the moisture content in the upper foot of soil locally. It allowed fall tillage and anhydrous ammonia to be applied under near perfect conditions. Like last year, January and February were both well below normal in both snowfall and liquid equivalent precipitation. The vast majority of the March precip fell as rain and the soil thawed, allowing it to soak in. In April, we greased the skids as we garnered over 4” of rain, the majority of which fell after the 15th. May amounted to over 8” of rain and June was over the top. It doesn’t take long to saturate the soil profile so careful what you wish for.

Bird watching after the snow left has been hit and miss, mostly miss lately. All the possible food sources are exposed and while there are occasional visitors, they’re not consuming sunflower, thistle and suet like when it was bitter cold with snow on the ground. This open winter should also be a positive for the pheasant population. There was a lot of corn left in the fields, particularly around the drowned-out spots where corn heads chewed the low placement ears up, shattering and scattering the kernels on top of the ground. Even though most of those areas were worked, it didn’t bury all of it, especially given the amount there was. Recent mornings, one can hear rooster pheasants crowing across the landscape on our way to do chores. A sure sign of spring. Another was our first robin of the season back on the 2nd, followed by a few more. There were some swans spotted flying over the ranch on the 2nd as well. We’re seeing glimpses and it’s getting closer with each passing day.

We got the last group of sheep shorn on Saturday with our expert shearer, the Garden Gnome, Misael & Avary all kicking it into high gear. Even though it was a challenge getting the mishmash of groups positioned to be shorn, we managed to get through them all and make better time than we could’ve imagined. We were able to devour another wonderful meal made by Mrs. Cheviot in a timely fashion. With all the sheep now shorn, we can focus our attention on getting all the ewes with lambs to the loafing area after we get through the snowfall event. It’s been nice to get as many moved out of the lambing barn as we have. The amount of climbing over panels has decreased dramatically as has the number of feed pans and small water buckets. The warmer temps have made the process more tolerable. While we’re not out of the woods entirely, we’re over 80% done lambing. Sure, another cold snap isn’t out of the question but the likelihood of one as long and deep as the one in mid- February is unlikely. If we lived through that, we can certainly deal with a shorter one. 

Sometimes after the bottle lamb feeding and lamb checks before 10 p.m., I like to watch some TV before falling asleep. In the lead-up to the Academy Awards there were numerous movies with Oscar winning performances. One night I caught the tail end of The Last Picture Show and had forgotten how many Hank Williams tunes were part of the soundtrack. I found it interesting that the movie was set from November 1951 to October 1952 and great care was taken to only include popular songs fitting that timeframe. I wondered why one of Hank’s all-time hits, Your Cheatin’ Heart was not included. Oddly enough, the song was recorded in September of 1952 but not released until late January in 1953, after Williams untimely death. I thought that was perhaps why. When I did some digging however, I discovered that Your Cheatin’ Heart was the “B” side to Kaw-Liga on the “A” side of the 78 rpm. Both were recorded and released at the same time. Kaw-Liga was included in the movie. Unless the song was the demo version recorded in 1951 where Williams curses when he misplays a chord and starts over again. Otherwise, I can’t tell you why. 

Poppy had another good week to frolic outside and strew her toys all over inside the house. One needs to constantly be aware of their location or it could result in a fall, broken appendages or both. Luckily she doesn’t play with Legos or worse yet, jacks. As she’s gotten older, she’s definitely more predictable. She threw us a curveball this past week though. We’ve been religious about giving her chewables for heartworm prevention as well as one for flea and tick protection. This has come off without a hitch once a month for over two years. She seemed to really like them. For some reason, she ate her heartworm medicine fine but balked on the flea and tick medication. I tried coating it in butter. She spit it out and licked the butter off. I cut it in four small pieces and embedded them in pieces of breakfast sausage. She promptly spit several of those out too, ate the sausage and left the chewable. After numerous attempts, she finally downed the last of her medicine. There’s only one more dose of each med left so it will be interesting to see what she does next time. She forgets that I’ve had dogs most of my life. I may not have seen all the herding dog tricks but this ain’t my first rodeo. 

See you next week…real good then.