One day of Rain

We got some more relief from the heat. We had 2.3 inches of rain overnight and it is cloudy today. That's wonderful. This should keep grass in the goat pasture through the rest of July.

I took the photo of these two fawns in the back this afternoon. They are no longer hiding and they are obviously being weaned since they are interested in the grass. Note how fast the grass 'greened' up from the rain.

I saw a sparrow chasing a Painted Bunting off the feeder on the 4th so I have ordered a 'Sparrow Trap'. I got notice that it shipped today so I'll see if I can trap the sparrows. Hopefully it will work on cowbirds too.

We did have a great neighborhood gathering on July 4th. Wonderful friends and food.

July heat!

The heat has returned. It was over 100 degrees yesterday and that's the forecast for the next week as well. The county commissioners put into effect the 'burn ban' on Monday, but that's to be expected this time of year in the heat.

I got up VERY early this morning in order to work on the tractor. Where it's parked it will be in the sun by 7:30 am. so I wanted an early start to replace the battery. I normally don't adjust my outdoor work for the deer, but this morning I did delay as there were nine deer in the back of the house. Two big bucks, two average bucks, a doe with two fawns, and two other does. It was interesting watching them. The fawns are so curious and the big bucks walked right up to the window. They soon started to scatter so I got to work. It's amazing what can get done when you know it will soon be hot. I replaced the tractor battery, aired the tractor tires, pushed some cedar into piles that I hadn't been able to do, spread a bucket load of gravel on the road, scraped and leveled the road going up the mountain, and filled the deer feeders, all before 8:00 a.m. I have some other tractor chores to do now that it's running again. I was lucky that the local feed store had the correct battery for my John Deere tractor yesterday.

Relief

We got some relief from the heat with a late afternoon shower and overnight rain. I'm not sure how much as I had taken up the rain gauge, but it was a nice rain of about two inches cumulative. A nice break from almost two weeks of 100 degree heat. It was overcast all day on the last day of June and that was wonderful for a change. I had just completed my watering around the house when the rain came so the grass has 'greened' up well. Some had already gone dormant though. Still lots of grass in the goat pasture and in the cedar.

The birds were not as active in the heat, but some out some today. I did see a painted bunting on the fountain in the courtyard. It was hard to find water before this rain.

There have been a lot of deer at the feeders. The fawns are getting active as well. They are discovering their legs and like to run.

It's the Heat!

If you read my cruise blog you know that I was away on a cruise in the middle of the month and I was not prepared for the extreme heat when I returned. It was over 100° everyday this week . With dental work scheduled and the heat there was to be little work to be done on the ranch. With no sprinkler system around the house it took all week to get the grass watered all around. Looks like that will be the project for this next week as well. Also keeping the wildlife tank full of water.

The Mountain Pinks are now in bloom. They look good.

We had a big group from the TSF&HG on the ranch this weekend for a dinner. They seemed to have a good time. I cooked 20 big rib-eye steaks on the grill in spite of the heat. We did eat inside though. Good fun.

June is here.

I'd been in the 'big city' for a week working on the Texas Scottish Festival so the critters have been in charge of the ranch. All the feeders, both deer and bird, are empty and the deer helped themselves to some holly growing around the house. Not too bad though as it's still very green and there is a lot to eat. The deer have been dropping fawns so they are not going far.

PHOTO: My neighbor went out to pick tomatoes this week and this is what he found in the tomato plants.

We've had big thunderstorms all around us for several days, but none have actually passed over us. The lightning and thunders has been very loud at times.

It's starting to warm up, but still cooling off at night so that makes it fine. Working inside in office this week anyway.

Good Week

Very busy in the office again this week. The weather is warming up somewhat, but it's still cooling off at night. It has warmed up enough that most of the spring wildflowers are gone. We did get 1.2 inches of rain this week and looks like we are going to have a lot of Mountain Pinks. They will bloom in mid June. The trees are really looking good we are getting plenty of rain for them this year. DW cut most of the grass this week so everywhere has been cut at least once now. It's very nice and green everywhere. Hopefully it will be that way through June.

We haven't seen Petey all week so I guess he/she has moved on. Still seeing a LOT of Painted Buntings though. I've seen a lot of lizards this week too.

I'll be glad to get back to a routine on the ranch. I have a lot of maintenance work to do on the chain saws and tractor before getting back to work.

Good Weekend

We were able to take a break from the office because of Memorial Day weekend so we were able to get in some ranch work. We finished cleaning the lower part of the 'goat lot' as it was threatening rain and good burning weather. We cleaned and cleared a lot of new and old cedar. There's still almost a full canopy of trees over the area. It looks very clean down there, at least the area next to the county road. Hope the goats appreciate it.

Usually don't mention things of a personal nature, but we did eat at a fantastic 'country' eatin' place on Saturday night. We had a 1.5 hour wait to be seated but the food was fantastic. The Loco Coyote Grill about 40 miles from the ranch located west of Glen Rose.

We also did some work on the cabin. On our fortnightly trip to Gatesville on Friday I purchased a new air conditioner and a small HDTV. With the help of a neighbor we installed and trimmed the new AC unit. It looks great and will really cool the cabin. I was also very impressed with the new TV. The digital signal works very well for out in the country much better than the old analog signal. The cabin is ready for summer visitors.

We had a nice rain this morning and then a heavy rain this afternoon. 2 1/2" of rain total. Also a lot of run off with this rain. We were in the cabin for the heavy rain that sounded good on thet metal roof. I could also see the culvert I installed take the run off around the cabin. It worked great.

Update

I've very busy in the office so no ranch updates. We did get 2" of rain during the week and we had family come visit for three days so that has also kept us busy. We like to get visitors as it breaks the routine in the country. They wanted to see a Painted Bunting and with the light rain on Saturday that was perfect Painted Bunting weather. Almost every time I looked outside I would see one. Of course I was looking for them. There was a Painted bunting on 6-7 different feeders during the weekend.

Petey is now competing with the squirrels, cardinals, and doves for seed. Interesting to watch them all on the ground under the feeders. In the evening add in rabbits and deer and it gets busy.

Weather has been great. Warming up in the day, but cooling off at night. A few nights was chilly.

Chores

We ended up doing more work in the goat pen or the 'feed lot' as the neighbors call it. It really cleans up very well. There is a very large and old stand of Texas Live Oaks that really stand out now that we have cleaned a lot of the old cedar from around them. They may be the tallest on the ranch as a group. Since we used all the goat panels along the county road fence we no longer have any fenced nursing pens. I'll probably just use the entire area as a big nursing pen when that time comes again. Now that its cleaned out it will be harder for a critter to sneak up on the goats without Annie seeing them.

I saw a fox today, first one in a while. Also the swallow who has nested on the back porch is pleased her eggs have hatched. She's flying all around the courtyard, but still watching the nest. Petey is still hanging around too. I'm not sure how big the territory is for a Painted Bunting, but I think I saw two different ones today. I thought I saw two a few days ago as well. I'll watch close for a while.

Goat Panels

The weather was partly cloudy most of the week, but we didn't get more than a trace of rain a few times. The birds have again been very active. Petey is still around. The Painted Buntings are spotted almost every day.

This is my very busy time with the Festival so I don't get to a lot of chores on the ranch. However we did get goat panels installed all across the fence row at the county road and goat pasture this week. This should keep any goats from getting out into the road. So far so good. It took several days to get them installed and cut limbs and cedar trees as needed along the fence row in order to get the panels in a straight line along the fence row. It took more time to then clean up and burn the debris, but it was finished today. The panels look good and we will now just leave them up as the primary fence.

I purchased new tires for the old farm truck. They cost a lot more than I spent on my first car many moons ago, $600, but now that the county road is paved I will invest in better tires. Supposedly they will last 45K miles. We'll see. Odometer reading at installation is 79,600 so these should be the last tires I buy for this truck. Also installed new battery on the lawn tractor this week and got it ready for the season.

Still very green, more wildflowers, and the trees look great. A good spring so far, no real heat as yet and cools off in the evenings.