The Border Fire

The last 2 weeks have been a little on the crazy side... I had blog posts all planned out in my head but haven't had time to get things taken care of!

We've been busy with the usual fall ranch work-weaning, preg-testing, moving cows, feeding calves, and to top it all off, a fire broke out on the ranch yesterday. GREAT... not. My plan to spend Friday afternoon coding invoices and getting them submitted was replaced with baking cupcakes, Rice Krispie bars, muffins, and then at about 8:30 I decided to throw in a batch of Chex Mix as well, assuming that the guys would be out fighting fire most of the weekend. So much for that team sorting today.

Around 11:30 yesterday we got a call from a neighbor wondering if anybody had checked out where the smoke was coming from, since it looked pretty close. Kelby, our boss, headed out to investigate. While he was gone, we got a call from another neighbor saying the fire was just about to jump on to our land. Justin got instructions and hopped in the fire truck as soon as he shoveled a couple of brats down. The day just went downhill from there. The fire burned through three of our pastures, one that hadn't been grazed this year or last year, as we were saving it for our commercial herd to graze in another month. I haven't heard anything as far as how many acres were burnt, but with 30 MPH winds yesterday, that fire moved FAST. Luckily we didn't have any cattle in the path of the fire, although there may have been some in the pasture where the fire started, I still haven't heard. They were supposed to get moved down to that pasture Thursday or Friday.

The smoke cloud at about 12:30 yesterday-it was much worse a couple hours later

Surprisingly, Justin did get to come home and get a few hours of sleep. It was after 1 when he crawled in bed, and by 6 he was up making coffee already. I don't see too much smoke this morning, but they will probably be on "mop-up" duty into next week. Thankfully the forecast isn't calling for any windy days.

Needless to say, everybody around here is ready for a big dump of snow. Since wishing for rain hasn't done anything the last three months, I guess we will just have to start waiting for snow.