The scurs were a tad too pessimistic on temperature and a little too optimistic about cloud cover. Stargazing this past week left a little to be desired. Will we stay out of the fog this week? Starting Wednesday, mostly sunny with highs of 25 – 30 and lows around 20. Mostly clear on Thursday with highs near 30 and lows dropping to 5 – 10. Mostly sunny and cooler for Friday with highs of only 15 and lows close to 10. Partly cloudy and warmer on Saturday. Highs of 20 and lows around 10. Sunday for Lincoln’s Birthday, partly cloudy with highs of 30 and lows of 20. Partly cloudy on Monday and warmer. Highs of 30 and lows near 20. Partly cloudy and slightly cooler for Valentine’s Day. Highs of 35 – 40 and lows of 20. The normal high for Valentine’s Day is 27 and the normal low is 9. The scurs remind you to get your sweetie pie something sweet or face the consequences.
More warm temperatures last week continued to make this a warmer than normal winter. And, about the time it sounds like it’s going to cool down, we get a few days as an added bonus like last Saturday. Permanent fish houses have become an endangered species on most area lakes. By Tuesday, only a small handful remained on St. Olaf Lake. The annual St. Olaf Lake fishing contest has been cancelled and reports of vehicles breaking through the ice elsewhere in the area continue to abound.
Bird feeding reports continue to parallel what we’re seeing at the ranch. Unless you’re in an absolute bird watching Shangri-La, you’re likely not seeing a great deal of activity and are probably saving money on birdseed this winter. Sure there are some birds and we are fortunate the chickadees have decided to hang around but it has gone up to two weeks between fillings on the feeders. Sometimes it changes from bird watching to “bird hearing”. One of the clear mornings when there was no fog, a rooster pheasant crowed down in the pond area right about sun up. Another one echoed his sentiments from neighbor Mark’s habitat area. While they’ve had a rough go of it, there are still some pheasants around. Plentiful food and cover along with lack of snow and ice should help get them by until spring.
Another Super Bowl is in the books and it was actually a decent, competitively played game with the outcome in doubt right down to the last play. It’s always nice to see some of these athletes reach their ultimate goal, like my relative Rocky Bernard for instance. He toiled many years playing for the Seattle Seahawks then came to the Giants a few years ago. He probably isn’t real closely related however as he doesn’t appear to be Irish.
Lambing season started off suddenly on Saturday. It was getting time to tighten the lambing barn up ahead of shearing and ewes starting to drop lambs. As I approached the building, one of the black ewes shot out of the door with a water bag trailing behind her. Hmmm…timing couldn’t have been much closer. After a couple hours of some painstaking measures to button up the building, there was already a little buck lamb on the ground outside in the mud. I grabbed the lamb and taking backwards baby steps was able to slowly coax the ewe back into the lambing barn. I then caught her quickly to strip her bag out and decided to let them bond for a while. It was warm out and sometimes messing with a lamb trying to get it to nurse is exactly the wrong thing to do. Besides, it was time to eat and I needed a break. Checking back in the lambing barn in a couple hours there was a little ewe lamb, making for a nice set of twins. By chore time, both lambs were up having supper. Said it before, I love it when a plan comes together. I love it even more when the shearer comes so the ewes lamb inside the buildings.
The next afternoon following the Gopher basketball game, it was time to move some oats around. Mrs. Cheviot’s boss would’ve marveled at my ingenuity and efficiency. About the time I was finishing up that project, I spied another ewe out back of the barn. This is never a good sign. Sure enough in the increasingly low light there was a little white blob next to the ewe. All the ewes were bellering as it was nearing feeding time. Mrs. Cheviot wasn’t home yet so it was up to Ruby and I to make a management decision. If we played our cards right, feeding the brood ewes would probably separate the freshly lambed ewe from the group as she’d stay with her lamb. This would give us an opportunity to move her through the gate into the loafing pen where we’d deposited the previous day’s ewe and lambs. We made the call and it was go time. Sure enough, the ewes nearly plowed me over to get at their grain. I grabbed the lamb and got the ewe to follow slowly but surely through the gate. I needed to set the lamb down to wire the gate back shut so Ruby took over running interference. Once that was done, getting her into the shed took some patience but once inside, I set the lamb down and quickly closed the overhead door. Ruby again distracted the ewe so she was more interested in her lamb than running off through the rest of the barn to escape. In under a minute we had the ewe and lamb moved into the loafing pen. All was well. The little buck was dried off and his tummy full as he drifted off to sleep under his mother’s watchful eye.
See you next week…real good then.