Snow and Wyoming Sheep

Always nice to get enough snow to help with the yearly snowpack. This last storm should be a tremendous help. Enough snow will guarantee full reservoir’s, running streams and rivers this summer. This will also make irrigation water available when, and where, it is needed downstream.

After we scooped our way to the garage

It's also terrific for the wildflowers and grasslands of Wyoming.

 

Last May in Guernsey State Park

The snow has kept me a bit closer to home than I like but looks like that by the weekend it will be better.

Need to wait for a little more melt before I take my seat on the front porch

In 1892, Governor B.B Brooks brought in sheep along with his cattle at his V Bar V Ranch. This was something that angered and disappointed cattle producers all over the west. Cattle had been king and sheep were much hated as more and more of the cattle business operated in Wyoming. Even the killing blizzards of the late 1880s did not deter the cattlemen, it also was one of the reasons that Brooks brought sheep to the V Bar V.  In his, Memoirs, he writes about snow and the effect it has on sheep.

“Then we thought, surely the blizzards, with the cold and deep snow in winter, would exterminate them; but they did not. In time, we discovered that sheep could stand more hardship and bad weather than the cattle. Still they kept coming, multiplying, prospering.”

As I have said before, at one time I loved winter, not so much anymore, but I still enjoy the nice days of winter and it looks like we have quite a few of them coming. I might be ready for spring, but still do not think I could become a snowbird and give up on the four seasons in Wyoming.

My backyard version of a snowbird palace

No matter how much I don't care for it, it's still beautiful

Relief from the Heat

Tired of all this heat?
Hey, remember last February 4 - yea, me neither? But I have photos.
Still hoping summer is about over?

We Need Snow Like it's 1886 Again

This winter has been so open in our part of Wyoming that it reminded me we are still in drought. We need snow, we’ll take rain, but we need snow. Hope the weather is not setting up for another disaster like the one in 1886. Won’t happen because we are better prepared today than the ranchers of more than a century ago, we hope.

The Wyoming summer of 1886 was hot and dry; cattle went into winter in less than perfect condition. In November heavy snow came and it stayed for two months. In late January the snows came again, snowing for four days and three nights before letting up. By spring the bad news was apparent, piles of dead cattle, many others were wobbling from starvation. Wyoming in 1886 proudly boasted of it being the greatest place on earth to raise livestock with over nine million cattle on the range. By 1895 only three million were left.

The main lessons learned from drought and blizzards were simple. Put up hay for winter feed and sell down when the grass is bad in the summer. Cattle once again cover the pasture lands of Wyoming, but never again will ranchers overdo like days past. We are getting better and proud of it. But we still need snow or rain.

How dry and warm has it been this winter? I have played 18 rounds of golf since the first of December, shouldn’t happen in Wyoming. Don’t get me wrong, I am enjoying the golf, but right now I would rather go sledding, sit by the fire and sip hot chocolate.

Good Old Snow and More Snow

Why is it that every time it snows a few inches the city is able to find enough snow to pile a foot or more into my driveway? By the way for those of you in warm weather areas – I have shoveled the snow from my walks and drives seven times so far this fall and winter. It is pretty but lately I see it only as pretty heavy, pretty hard work, pretty slick, pretty cold, pretty high heating bills and pretty annoying but we still love it.

Snow - I thought it was just about summer

Fact – It snowed here yesterday. Rain first, then hail, then vertical snow followed by hurricane type winds and horizontal snow followed by more vertical snow. Two or three inches in all, isn’t it almost June? Think it might be time for this old boy to look at moving down off this mountain, 7200 feet might be too much for these old bones.