Spring Ditch Cleaning

Spring work has started.


We hired a trackhoe to clean the ditch that comes down into our property that carries our water. It hasn't been cleaned in years and required a bigger machine than our small backhoe.



Looking good!

Irrigation & Garden Stuff

Ken got the gated pipe across the main orchard today and has started irrigating.


Here are the 50 honey locust trees in our temporary nursery orchard. We will eventually move them out where they belong but we done have irrigation water where they need to go.

July 4th Paonia Cherry Days

Fourth of July is the big local Cherry Days festival. We took the entire day off to enjoy the show. It starts early in the morning with a pancake breakfast benefit for the local fire department. Next is the Cherry Days Parade. If you aren't in the parade you are watching it.



The fire department and anyone with a neat old car is in it. A Cherry Day Queen and King from the high school is crowned.


Clubs and organizations also participate from the Boy Scouts to Rotary.



Of course every politician running for local office is also in and most are handing out candy or something.







Any Paonia High School class that is having a reunion this year will put in an entry.





The clown band has been an institution for at least the last 50 years or longer.



There are wonderful restored old tractors and equipment that get hauled out every year.





Ranchers and horse clubs also turn out. There is a fairly big draft horse group locally and some of the carriages are really nice.





The North Fork Horse Patrol does mountain search and rescues and is made up of local ranchers and anyone with a good mountain horse who is interested. They also sponsor the yearly rodeo and bull riding competitions.





The parade ends at the town park and there is music, a carnival and booths.



We had a great time and then went to the annual Historical Society Ice Cream Social. It's our big fund raiser each year.

Got home to take a picture of Mount Lamborn. The rule of thumb is that if there is snow on Lamborn on July 4th there is decen tirrigation water. We have more snow left than we have had for years.

Planting, Marking, Lambing and more

Lots has been going on and I haven't updated this very much since we've been so busy.

The white shed is now completely gone. It sure looks different out there now. We still have a few of the foundation pieces that need to be removed. They are rotten logs embedded into the ground so it will take a while.

We also had a major hail storm on 8 May. I thought that it took off lots of the apple blossom buds but it only took off stuff near the top. The ground was white like it had snowed and the sheep were all racing around and very upset.

During the storm one ewe put her lambs in the dog house we had for the guard dogs from this winter. These lambs seemed to really enjoy being out of the hail. Several other ewes also figured this out and so there were several lambs from different mothers in there at one time.

On the 12th of May the two fields got planted. We are using a mixture of meadow brome, orchardgrass, smooth brome, ryegrass, wheatgrass, festolium and oats as a nurse crop. We'll see how it all grows this year and frost seed a clover next spring if we don't have too many broadleaf weeds. The fields got planted just in time. Starting that evening and for the next day we had rain. We got almost 3/4 of an inch of rain, just perfect to settle the seeds in and get them started. We still have to get the field marked and ready to irrigate but the rain was perfectly timed.

By the 16th of May the orchard was in full bloom. In spite of the hail and the snow later we still have a lot of blossoms. When you walk out into the orchard the trees hum from all the bees. There are also a lot of moths and hummingbirds that are pollinating the flowers. We might actually have some apples this year if the blossoms are any indication.

The orchard looks really nice in full bloom in spite of its age.

Yesterday the fields got marked. Today we have to get all the irrigation pipes installed and start watering the fields.


Lambing is winding down. We are pretty much at the end of the time for the primary rams to produce lambs. So far we have had 60 live lambs and 3 stillborn ones. 42 ewes have lambed and there are 15 left to go. Tomorrow we plan to sort out the ewes that have not yet lambed and separate them from the ones that have so it's easier to locate them. I suspect that none of the remaining 15 will lamb until the second period which won't start until the first week of June. All the lambs are growing well and I'm really pleased with their overall quality.

New Ditch Section

Our irrigation water enters the property on the north east corner of the orchard. From there we have a concrete ditch box that sends the water either west to irrigate the orchard and front pasture or east to irrigate the back cedars pasture. On the property above ours there is a gate right by where our ditch comes in and the neighbors cattle are always smashing down our ditch and we lose water. One task this winter while the cows are gone is to put in new culvert pipes from the new elk fence up past the gate so the cattle cannot walk where our ditch is. Here Ken is working on where the ditch water will enter the new culverts.

The first attempt leaked around the last joint but Ken got it fixed. The final installation looks great. We won't know for sure how it all works until next summer when full irrigation water is coming down the ditch but for now for winter stock water it's a big improvement.