A Cattle Drive, Among Other Things

Today was a nippy 10 degrees F here on the mountain. Cold winds blew in from the Northwest and brought some rain and snow flurries throughout the day. Gordon was here at his usual time this morning and before we cleaned the barn, we had our small and relatively easy cattle drive. It was time to move the herd from their summer pasture of rotational grazing, down to their winter pasture that has a shelter for them to get in out of the cold, as well as a water tub with a heater in it to keep their water from freezing. I wasn't sure how easily they'd move to their new winter home, but they pretty much just followed Gordon all the way down as he led them with a bucket full of feed, that he shook, while he walked. I brought up the rear just to keep the herd moving, but I don't even think they knew I was there or was any kind of threat, for that matter.

The rest of the day was spent bringing in all of the electric rotational fencing and cleaning up all the old and dirtied hay out of the summer pastures, with the tractor, and taking it down to the manure pile.

I got a Christmas card in the mail today from my dear mother and she was nice enough to include a little something special!

That's real great ma. Thanks a bundle. I appreciate that! I dunno what the exchange rate is on that particular type of currency but i'll see what I can do!

When I came in this evening from chores and farm work, I decided my Charlie Brown tree needed a little sprucing up before the big day!

Nothing says Merry Christmas like a snare set in the lower branches of my tree! Hopefully when Santa comes he'll have a few of his pet wildcats with him and one of them will get snared while they are helping Santa put out presents under my tree. I'm sure Santa's not familiar with snaring and trapping equipment and how they release, since most boys and girls these days don't ask for such things, so he'd just have to slap a "From Santa" sticker on the dead cat and be on his jolly way! What a great gift under the tree to wake up to Christmas morning!

I went to Tim's last night to do some fur handling. We skinned a coyote, two beavers, and a muskrat. I gave him the mink I skinned a few weeks back, and he fleshed that and the muskrat while I was there. He showed me how to take the castor sacs out of the beavers. Castor goes for $60 a pound, up here, which makes the castor itself worth more than the pelt! Castor is used in a lot of women's perfumes. Now I get why I like the smell of women so much; Reminds me of the trapline!

Before I left his house he showed me how he makes his snares and he gave me two ready made snares, a wooden muskrat stretcher, and a bottle of beaver lure we extracted from the scent glands on the two beavers we skun! It's like Christmas already!

I'm still editing the video footage from the weekend but I'll have Part two up soon. Hopefully tonight but probably tomorrow. Weather permitting, I'll be goin out to check snares with Tim tomorrow night and hopefully we'll have somethin to put on camera!

Until then!

X Jeremiah