Summer is progressing rapidly, and we're over halfway our stay here 'up the hill'.
We've set the 1st of October as our target date for wrapping up all the work that needs to be done here and so far it looks like we're pretty much on schedule.

We had quite an exciting day yesterday when they wrangled up last year's steers, to weigh them and get them ready for their journey to Iowa, where they will be spending the last months of their lives being fattened up at a big feed lot.

They were already sold in the spring and spend the whole summer grazing on the mountain meadows, and they also had free roam of the forests and canyons.



They are (almost) all Angus cows ..



For the weighing a brand inspector and weigh master came up to supervise, just to make sure everybody plays fair!

 

The scale is situated right outside our gate, on the other side of the road.
Maryann and Wade did the wrangling by horse, with assistance of the dogs of course, and had them already all in the corrals when I arrived .. too bad, I didn't get to see that ..

The horse and dog's work was done, they're not needed for the sorting, but they kept a good eye on everything ..

 

I did witness the weighing though, they went on the scale in groups of twenty:

That's Maryann ..

And here's Bill, the weigh-master ..

According to Maryann they looked good, and each group weighed in around 20.000 pound. 

That's about 1000 per steer, which is about what they have to weigh, according to the sales contract.

A steer goes for about $600-700, and there were 140 of them, so .. cha-ching!  

There was a lot of sorting going on, separating the small ones from the bigger, and than making groups of a certain weight so they could all fit in the 2 big cattle-trucks that were lined up.

Calculating and judging ..

Finally it was time to load them up. 
The truck trailer has several compartments and they have to come up in certain groups to fit ..

I didn't hang around too long after they started the loading. 
The animals were much more nervous now and I started to feel sorry for the poor guys.
Their wonderful life here up the mountain was over .. but at least they'd had that life, which is more than most others have ..

Off to Iowa ..

James had miscalculated on his drywall sheets, only 13 but who's counting, so we went a little earlier than usual to Grangeville.
On the way down, we saw this doe with her fawn:

This picture is from a while ago when it was still a little green down the hill towards Cottonwood ..
 
 

This is how it looks now .. all browns and yellows.
The grasses are mostly cut ..

But the grain is still son the fields. A lot of it is winter-Barley, some are Oats ..

Of course we played a round of golf, one of our worst ever, followed by (much needed) coffee at Crema:

Franklin was a wise man!

I've seen some more Elk lately, but they are very skittish and I have a hard time getting another shot of them.
The deer are calmer, and we have quite a few that come by almost every evening in the meadow in front of the RV ..

I so hope they will survive this coming hunting season ..

During our trip down the hill we picked more blackberries and I have a huge stash in the freezer by now. 
Fortunately we can use the one in the house because there's no way it would fit all in the RVs.

We eat a lot 'fresh' in our cereal and yogurt or with ice-cream, but I use the frozen ones for baking, like in this cobbler:
 

It looks a little messy, but it's delicious!

James has finished the drywall by now, these pics are from when he was almost there ..

He's working on the mud at the moment, and the rooms are really starting to take some shape now.
The carpet is ordered, the tile has arrived and it's time to pick out the paint color. 
This part of the work is so much more rewarding!

Well, that was about all for now, I have to start making a zucchini/chicken casserole for dinner.
Miriam has gifted us a whole crate of cucumber, zucchini, squash and peaches from her garden down the hill. Yum! 

Better make the most of this summer-bounty, 

it's going to be Fall a month from now!

Hay fields around Grangeville

It's August already, and about the hottest time of the year here!
The grasses are all brown now, and the hay has been harvested almost everywhere. 
The meadows are covered with those big rolls and trucks are driving off and on, stacked to the top, to deliver them at farms all around the valley for their winter feed-lots.

We went down the hill for our weekly golf and coffee R&R, followed by a grocery and material run.
James had to pick up some rope at Wet gulch where we also found a lot of the Blackberries ripe for picking!

Let me tell you, a sleeveless dress is not the right picking attire! Those berries are nasty!



We ended up covered in scratches, and berry stains (!), but also with 2 big containers of berries!
I froze some (for crisp/buckle/cobbler), and the rest we ate with cereal and ice-cream. Yummm!

Summer is also bug-time and although we're very happy that we don't have any mosquitoes, or flies, we do have a lot of Paper Wasps.
They've made many nests under the eaves of the house. These are two of the bigger ones:

                

The one on the left isn't covered with 'paper' yet.

We also have a lot of large grasshoppers, I think this is a Two-striped Grasshopper:

And of course, as I said on my Facebook page, and as I have said before .. every paradise has its snake:

I almost stepped on this one, which would not have been good, it's a Western Rattlesnake!
It was early in the morning and he was laying very still and in the shade, I suspect he was still asleep or trying to warm up.

Remember these cute little ducklings I photographed in July?

It looks like she lost two of them but the other seven have grown a lot in the last four weeks .. 




What else? I finally finished another puzzle, which has been on the table for weeks!
It doesn't look too difficult, but those chickens in the hay and all those people are quite a puzzle .. ha!

On the building front, we had quite a flurry of activity this week.
Ronnie, our 'boss', and Sam, the owner, were back from Louisiana, and had brought 3 friends with them!
They're all Pharmacists by the way, except for Ronnie, and are here for their yearly reunion/get-together and camping/hiking trip.

They brought some building materials up from Boise, helped unload and than move two stacks of drywall to the suite in the back. Nice!

They also helped installing the last part of the furnace-exhaust on the roof.
James had done all the prep-work and custom made a base for it:

        

But he needed a few more hands to lift the large and heavy top part, to place it on the base ...

                          
                                                   Success!
 
Ronnie helped us the rest of the day, by putting up dry-wall on the ceiling in the bedroom-suite!
We had it all insulated and covered with plastic ..



Just waiting for the drywall to go up ..

The master (Ronnie) at work ..

There was a lot of joking and chatting going on ..

It's so much easier, and more fun, to do this with two or three people!
It would have been quite a chore for just James and me, but now we knocked it off in one afternoon!

Afterward we were invited to join everybody for dinner, which was prepared by the rest of the guys.  
They made Elk-burgers and fried potatoes, and I added a Caesar salad. It was delicious!

All in all, it was a very enjoyable day with good company, good food and a lot of hard work being accomplished!
They all left for Montana the next day to go on their camping trip, so we have the place to ourselves again.

Not a very spectacular sunset but a very peaceful one ..
Life is good!