What We've Been Up To

 One morning we watched 2 elk sparing right off the deck. I didn't have my good camera charged so I wasn't able to capture it very well, but DH and I were so delighted to watch them

They played for about 20 minutes before they meandered off into the trees

And a few days later a herd of cow elk with their calves wandered down

                             

About 10 minutes later, 8 does joined them.

No, we don't have a feeder out, just water for the horses and a tub with some mineral/salt. 

We really enjoy beginning our mornings with the locals, but we actually DO get some work done around here. For the most part, our days are still and sunny with highs in the 50's and 60's. That seems unseasonably warm for December, but it allows us to continue to chip away at outdoor projects. We just bought a load of pipe so fence building season is getting closer. We've seen elk sign in the driveway so they are crossing the electric fence we put up temporarily. Time to get a real fence put in.

DH installed a hoist in the storage building

And  we drove and welded some pipe to the 4 skids on the new chicken coop and are gathering supplies to build the yard around it. That pipe is 5' deep - I don't think we'll need to worry about the chicken coop going anywhere.

We cleaned out the hay barn 

That was a dirty job - I could barely lift my arms the next day after all of the shoveling

and brought in some winter hay

And DH shoveled out the alley and parks the  skid steer there.

DH's brother-in-law is an order buyer for cattle and he asked if DH would video a set of heifers for him so we left early one morning and headed to a ranch on the other side of the mountain

We tried (and succeeded most nights) to stay awake to watch the 10 rounds of the NFR. I worked on binding a quilt on night 1

And still hadn't finished on night 10...I do more watching than binding.

We've also been working on replacing an old water line. DH and a neighbor have been working on it a couple of days a week, but I fill in every so often. Fixing water leaks and running water lines is much more challenging here than it was in the desert flats

                                                  

Skeet's our official project manager

Working in this fresh mountain air sure does make us sleep well at night, but it makes me too tired to stay awake long enough to write blog posts and in the morning we always seem to have company 😉