Most of you have read the story of my cold, snowy ride to bring our cows home. And if you haven’t, well, you should do that now.

The photos below were taken by a good friend of the family (who happened to be visiting when this “little” job came up), and these photos were taken by him from the front of the herd. They’re beautiful and they were snapped with his cell phone!

Enjoy.

Despite the pretty skies, and the snow, and the pretty photos you see above, it was a cold day. And in the words of my daddy: “[to] all those SD ranchers, thank you for all you do to feed America. It’s a shame so very few understand what you go through to provide us with beef.”

Happy Trails!

XO

I don’t know how the rest of you spent New Year’s Day and the day after, but I can tell you how we spent ours. And I apologize in advance for the quality of the photos- they were all taken with my cell phone 1. because there isn’t room in the tractor for the camera really and 2. because it was so freakin’ cold this day, that camera really has trouble staying warm enough to do a good job.

We’d actually planned a get together, down at Bud’s house. Bud is Zach’s little brother, for those of you wondering. But a blizzard blew in on Thursday and sort of raged on and off through Saturday morning. It was so bad in fact, that even though we planned to just drive the 1/4 mile down to their house from ours on Saturday we had to cancel the party because the drifts were blowing in faster than Bud and Big Green could plow them out.

That meant that New Year’s Day, we’d be plowing a LOT of snow. We didn’t get down to see the cows that day because it took so long to clear out the snow around the place that it was all they could do to get all the animals at corral situated and watered and what not.

Here’s what the front door looked like when we opened it New Year’s Day. Keep in mind that Zach and Ty had cleared it three times the night before. Zach opted to leave the screen door open so that we could get outside in the morning if the snow continued to blow in too bad.

Yes, that is snow in the corner of the door, and yes, had the screen door not been open, we’d have had a heck of a time getting out in the morning!

After getting all of our chores done around the ranch on New Year’s Day, we knew we’d be heading to one of our river pastures to see the cows on Sunday. There is snow everywhere.

Here we are pushing the first of what was probably 6 or 7 miles of a trail to find the cows:

Most of our cow herd was pushed into the neighbor’s pasture during the storm, and we had to go all they way through two of our pastures, and over to their pasture to get to them. We headed down a ridge to see how close we could get to them and almost got stuck.

You can’t see it from the photo above, but that snow was probably close to 5ft high on both sides by the time we plowed our way through it.

The plan was that we were going to find the cows and then Bud would bring the pickup (which would contain lots of cow cake) so we could cake the cows. He called shortly after Zach told him where we were to say that he hadn’t made it in to the pasture but a quarter of a mile before he got stuck. We were on our way over to meet him when he called, but it was slow going, because despite the fact that we were on a flat, there were so many drifts blown in so tight, that it took us three different routes to get over to him because sometimes even Big Green would say, there’s too much snow here for me to move!

This is looking back at the final trail we blazed. As an aside, I rode through here yesterday on my way to bring the cows home- that is in and of itself an adventure story that should certainly be told, but now let’s just say that the horse I was riding is nearly 5 feet tall at the withers and the height of those drifts after they’d been plowed through was about 2/3 of the way up my horse!

We finally got the pickup unstuck, and headed back down to call cows. They were glad to see this:

Cow cake is an extruded feed- with corn and other grain feeds in it. It’s very high in protein, which is what helps keep the cows warm in the winter months here in this frozen north of South Dakota. It’s also got lots of vitamins and minerals to help the calves that these mama cows are carrying.

Here you can see Zach clearing some snow off and that the cows are quite interested in what’s in the back of this pickup!

It was at this point that I longed for the big camera:

This was such a pretty scene, and you can see why- the sun is breaking through the clouds, and the girls are all standing patiently waiting to be fed. But the BB photo will have to suffice as it’s the only one I got!

Hey there girl!

Once we got those cows caked, we headed back to our pasture to cake about 50 or so cows that were in that pasture. They were down by the watering hole (that somehow managed to stay open during the storm) that we’d cut open several times in the past few days. The snow was really drifted in hard and deep down there:

Before we headed down to the river bottom, the boys had shoveled the remaining cake into the bucket of the tractor, and since we were clearly buried up to our axles in snow, we needed to get the cake fed before we could dig our way back to a less snowed-in area. That meant that Zach had to take it by the shovelful and toss it to the cows about 30 yards away.

I guess all told we spent probably 5 hours plowing our way down and back; we even came home after we got Bud unstuck, to have lunch!

And that my friends, is another day in my life.

Until next time- Happy Trails and Happy New Year!

In the winter, at least here in the northern states, our average temperatures aren’t close to being above freezing from December through about March. Which means, that the water supply for our animals, other than the artesian ground water (which is about 90 degrees) is frozen until then. Because you see, even if it gets above freezing it would only be for a day or two and it’s hardly warm enough to melt off 6-12 (or more) inches of ice.

So we head to the river daily- at least one of us does. Right now it’s Zach’s brother Bud (and it will be me on Wednesday and Thursday this week), but this weekend, The Cowboy, his son, Ty and myself, went for a trip to chop ice. We took a trip to see the cows and open water when it was barely double digits- By the way you still open water if its in single digits, snowing, or blowing. It’s one of the beautiful things (or a curse) of living where we do, doing what we do.

Going through the gate into the pasture where the cows are currently living.

Hey mama!

The river is completely frozen.

Looking down into the frozen river:

Walking out to chop a trough.

Ooooh! There’s fish down there! And there are- minnows!

There’s cracks in the ice everywhere (but you could still drive across it- I wouldn’t but people do!). I understand that it cracks sometimes because what is underneath it isn’t stable.

There’s the little man himself, chopping some “toe-holds”, because you know, ice can be slippery!

He is awesome help!

Dad took over and his trough is almost finished:

Once the hole is chopped and you let it fill with water- there was almost 6 inches of ice on the river this particular day, you have to scoop out the ice that you’ve chopped.

See the big chunk of ice that’s being tossed out?

Time for a lesson:

Zach is calling cows by wiggling the shovel around in the opened trough. Ty is goofing off, and you can see yesterday’s frozen trough in the foreground.

Ty gets to work on that one.

Dad comes in to finish, once again:

You’re welcome #121

Chopping ice is an excellent work-out. And if you’re wondering if I did anything besides take photos- the answer is yes. I chopped part of a new trough that they opened the next day. But this week it will be up to me to open water and call the girls to it on Wednesday and Thursday. I’m looking forward to it!